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ESSAYS

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY

‘VOLUME II

Oe

Essays

Historical and Literary

BY

JOHN FISKE

VOLUME II

IN FAVOURITE FIELDS

“Tf thou wouldst press into the infinite, go out to all
parts of the finite.”

— GOETHE,

New Pork
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Lr.
1902

All rights reserved

CopyRIGHT, 1902,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.

VY <S, J
Lersiry of WR j

Nortoood jpress
J. 8. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFATORY NOTE

I wisH to express my cordial acknowledgments to
Harper & Brothers; also to the editor of the Cosmo-
politan, in whose magazines three of the Essays in
this volume have appeared.

ABBY MORGAN FISKE.

WESTGATE,
October 15, 1902.

VII.

INDEX

CONTENTS

OLp AND New Ways oF TREATING HISTORY . ;
JoHN MILTON . : ; ; : 5 ;
THe Fatt oF NEw FRANCE , : p :

ConNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE ON THE FEDERAL CON-
STITUTION

Tuer DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BOSTON TEA
PARTY .

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY
HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 7 ,
JoHN TYNDALL.

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE . - ‘

KOsSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS : ;

PAGE

123

161
197
227
239
249

285,

3°7

~
’

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING
HISTORY

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

Ir would not be easy to name any king who has left
behind him a more odious memory than Henry VIII.
of England. The incidents of his domestic life have
won for him a solitary kind of immortality. The
picture of him with which most of us have grown up
from childhood is that of a Bluebeard who, as soon
as he got tired of a wife, would have her beheaded
and forthwith marry another. Probably the popular
notion of his reign does not contain much more than
this, unless it be a vague remembrance of his quarrel
with Rome. But forty years ago Mr. Froude set
before the world a very different conception of King
Henry, in which he appears as a patriot ruler, endowed
with many excellent qualities of mind and heart, and
much to be pitied for the perversity of fortune which
attended his selection of wives. In these conclusions
Mr. Froude no doubt went rather too far, as is often
the case when novel views are propounded. With
regard to its general effects upon the English people,
Henry’s rule was, on the whole, eminently good; but
the fierce reign of terror which counted Sir Thomas
More among its victims is something to which one
is not easily reconciled, and in the king’s character
there are features of the ruffian which no ingenuity
can explain away. As for the Bluebeard notion,

3

4 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

however, it is to a great extent dissipated. The
domestic tragedy remains as hideous and loathsome
as ever, but in the case of the two queens who lost
their heads, the king appears more sinned against
than sinning. Catherine Howard unquestionably
brought her fate upon herself, and in all probability
the same is true of Anne Boleyn, who fares worse
and worse as we learn more about her. The critical
historian still finds much to condemn in Henry VIII,
but between his verdict and that of the traditional
popular opinion there is a very wide difference.
.Another instance of such a wide difference is fur-
nished by the conduct of Edward I. with reference to
the disputed succession to the throne of Scotland.
A few months ago’ there was published a new edition
of a rather dull romance which our grandfathers
used to find entertaining, “The Scottish Chiefs,” by
Jane Porter. I doubt if it will get many readers now.
In this book the greatest of English kings, a man
who, for nobility of character, was like our Washing-
ton, is recklessly charged with tyranny and bad faith,
while Bruce and Wallace are treated not merely as
heroes — which is all right— but as faultless heroes;
even such an act as the murder of the Red Comyn
in the church at Dumfries is mentioned with approval.
Curiously enough the views set forth in this romance
have been traditional not only in Scotland but in
England, so that when Mr. Robert Seeley, in 1860,
published his book entitled “ The Greatest of all the
Plantagenets,” his defence of King Edward took many
people by surprise. The question was soon afterward
handled by Freeman in such a way as to set it at rest.
1 1896.

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 5

Concerning Edward’s entire good faith there is no
more room for doubt.

Yet another and different kind of example of the
havoc wrought upon popular opinions by critical
investigation is furnished by the legend of William
Tell. To our grandfathers that famous archer was
as real a personage as Oliver Cromwell, though
doubts on the subject had been expressed in Switzer-
land as long ago as 1598, the story was declared to
be apocryphal by a learned Swiss clergyman, named
Freuden-Berger, in 1760, and it was completely ex-
ploded by the Swiss historian Kopp in 1835. The
persons called William Tell and Gessler never existed
in Switzerland, contemporary chroniclers never men-
tion them, the story first appeared in print one hundred
and seventy-five years after the date, 1307, when its
events were said to have occurred, and, moreover, it
was copied from the book of a Danish historian, Saxo
Grammaticus, written more than a century Jdefore
1307. In Saxo’s book it is a Danish archer, named
Palnatoki, who shoots an apple from his son’s head,
and the incident is placed in the year 950. The
Swiss story is identical with the Danish story, and
the latter is simply one version of a legend that is
found in at least six different Teutonic localities, as
well as in Finland, Russia, and Persia, and among
the wild Samoyeds of Siberia. There can be little
doubt that the story is older than the Christian era,
and in the course of its wanderings it has been
attached now to one locality and now to another,
very much as the jokes and witticisms told a century
ago of Robert Hall were in recent years ascribed to
Henry Ward Beecher.

6 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

So many cherished traditions have been rudely upset
as to produce a widespread feeling of helplessness with
regard to historical beliefs. When one is so often
proved to be mistaken, can one ever feel sure of being
right? Or must we fall back upon the remark, half
humorous, half cynical, once made by Sainte-Beuve,
that history is, in large part, a set of fables, which men
agree to believe in? The great critic should have put
his remark into the past tense. Men no longer agree
to believe in fables. All historical statements are
beginning to be sifted. But this winnowing of the
false from the true, the perpetual testing of facts and
opinions, is not weakening history but strengthening
it. After a vast amount of such criticism, destructive
as much of it is, our views of the past are not less but
more trustworthy than before.

The instances above cited may illustrate for us the
first of the differences between the old and the new
ways of treating history. The old-fashioned historian
was usually satisfied with copying his predecessors,
and thus an error once started became perpetuated ;
but in our time no history written in such a way would
command the respect of scholars. The modern histo-
rian must go to the original sources of information, to
the statutes, the diplomatic correspondence, the reports
and general orders of commanding officers, the records
of debates in councils and parliaments, ships’ log-books,
political pamphlets, printed sermons, contemporary
memoirs, private diaries and letters, newspapers, broad-
sides, and placards, even perhaps to worm-eaten ac-
count books and files of receipts. The historian has
not found the true path until he has learned to ransack
such records of the past with the same untiring zeal

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 7

that animates a detective officer in seeking the hidden
evidences of crime. If some other historian a century
ago told the same story that we are trying to tell, he
probably told it from fewer sources of information than
we can now command; but if this is not the case, if a
century has passed without increasing our direct infor-
mation upon the story in hand, it has at least been a
century of added human experience in general, so that
even when we work upon the same materials as our
predecessor we are likely to arrive at somewhat differ-
ent conclusions. Our first rule, then, is never to rest
contented with the statements of earlier historians,
unless where the evidence behind such statements is no
longer accessible. This is especially likely to occur
with ancient history, for the various agencies for re-
cording events were much less complete and accurate

before than since the Christian era. We have a hun-

dred ways of testing Macaulay’s account of the expul-
sion of the Stuarts, where we have one way or no way
of checking Livy’s narrative of the Samnite Wars; in
the one case our knowledge is like the light of midday,
in the other it is but a twilight.

There are periods, however, in ancient history, con-
cerning which our authorities are luminous, and the
picture is doubtless, on the whole, as correct as those
which can be framed for modern periods. The literary
monuments of Greek life in the age of the Pelopon-
nesian War—the narratives of Thucydides and Xeno-
phon, the works of the great tragedians, the wit and
drollery of Aristophanes, the dialogues of Plato, the
speeches of Andokides and Lysias — with the remains
of sculpture and architecture, bring that ancient society
wonderfully near to us. Other periods in Athens and

8 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome, stand out before us
with truthful vividness. But on the whole the regis-
tration of material for history has been much more full
and consecutive since the Christian era than before it,
and to this general statement the darkest of what we
call the Dark Ages, as, for example, the period of
Merovingian decline in the seventh and eighth centu-
ries, forms but a partial exception. The registry of
laws and edicts was supplemented by the innumerable
chronicles which we owe to the marvellous industry of
the monks. He who looks over a few of the seven
hundred majestic volumes of the Abbé Migne’s collec-
tion, will come into the fit frame of mind for admiring
that gigantic and patient labour which most of us fail
to revere only because its results have never appealed
to our sense of sight. For literary excellence, monkish
Latin has little to charm us as compared with the diction
of Cicero, but in its vast treasure-houses are enshrined
the documents upon which rest in great part the foun-
dations of our knowledge of the beginnings of modern
society. Ages which have left behind so much written
registry of themselves are not to be set down as wholly
dark.

What would English history be without the mo-
nastic chronicles of Malmesbury, of St. Albans, of
Evesham, of Abingdon, and many another? . If you
would understand the mental condition of our fore-
fathers in King Alfred’s time, with regard to diseases,
medicaments, and household science in general, there
is nothing like the mass of old documents published
by the Record Office under the quaint title of “ Leech-
doms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of England.” Or

1 Ewald, “ Paper and Parchment,” p. 279.

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 9

if it be the social condition of England under the later
Plantagenets that interests us, nothing could serve our
purpose better than the political poems and songs of
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from that same
repository of national archives. The Year Books,
too, containing the law reports from the eleventh cen-
tury onward are an almost inexhaustible mine of
material for studying the social growth of the people
whose centres of national government are to-day at
London and at Washington.

It is the increased facility of access to the national
archives that has contributed more than anything else
to the deeper and more accurate knowledge of Eng-
lish history which the past generation has witnessed.
A few years ago it might have seemed that the seven-
teenth century had been exhaustively treated. With
Ranke’s masterly volumes and those of Guizot, with
Carlyle’s edition of the letters and speeches of Cromwell,
and with Macaulay’s fascinating narrative, one might
have supposed that for some time to come there would
be no further need for new books on that period. Yet,
forthwith, came Mr. Rawson Gardiner, and began to
rewrite the whole century. His first volume started
with the year 1603, and his fourteenth arrives only at
the year 1649; long life to the author! For the time
which it covers, his book supersedes all others. The
work was made necessary by the wholesale acquisition
of fresh sources of information, settling vexed ques-
tions, filling gaps in the chain of cause and effect, and
throwing a bright light upon acts and motives hereto-
fore obscure. This acquisition of new material is one
among many instances of the results that have flowed
from improved ways of keeping public archives; so

10 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

that a few words upon that subject may be not with-
out interest.

Let us be thankful to our forefathers in the old
country that they did not wilfully burn their public
documents, but only hid them here and there, in gar-
rets and cellars, sheds and stables, where, but for a
merciful Providence, fire and vermin would long ago
have made an end of them. In 1550 it was discovered
that some important Chancery records had been eaten
away by the lime in the wall against which they re-
posed, and a few years afterward Queen Elizabeth
undertook to have suitable storage provided for all
such things in the Tower of London. What passed
for suitable storage we may learn from a letter written
a hundred years later to King Charles II. by William
Prynne, Keeper of the Records: “I endeavoured the
rescue of the greatest part of them from that desola-
tion, corruption, confusion, in which (through the
negligence, nescience, or slothfulness of their former
keepers) they had for many years by past lain buried
together in one confused chaos under corroding,
putrefying cobwebs, dust, filth, in the dark corner of
Czesar’s Chapel in the White Tower, as mere useless
reliques. . . . The old clerks [were] unwilling to
touch them for fear of fouling their fingers, spoiling
their clothes, endangering their eyesight and healths
by their cantankerous dust and evil scent. In raking
up this dung-heap . . . I found many rare, ancient,
precious pearls and golden records. But all [these]
will require Briareus his hundred hands, Argus his
hundred eyes, and Nestor’s centuries of years, to
marshal them into distinct files, and make exact
alphabetical tables of the several things, names, places

ee ee ee oe

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY II

comprised within them.”' Yet for nearly two cen-

turies after this appeal the priceless records went on
accumulating in such places as the White Tower, the
basement of which was long used for storing gun-
powder, or in the Temple and Lincoln’s Inn, where
many documents perished in flames as late as 1849.
It was not until 1859 that a suitable building was
completed in which the national archives of Great
Britain at last found a worthy home.

At the same time there came a sudden end to the
jealousy with which these materials for history were
withheld from public inspection. Occasionally, in
former days, some eminent scholar would be allowed
access to such as were accessible. Thus, in 1679,
Gilbert Barnet was permitted to use such papers as
might be of help in completing his “ History of the
Reformation.” For such permission a warrant from
the lord chamberlain or one of the secretaries of state
was required, and there was red tape enough to deter
all but the most persistent seekers. About 1850 the
wise master of rolls, Lord Romilly, put an end to all
this privacy, and now you can go to the Record Office
and read the despatches of Oliver Cromwell or the
letters of Mary Stuart as easily as you would go toa
public library and look over the new books.

But this is not all. As fast as is practicable the state
papers, chronicles, charters, court rolls,and other archives
of Great Britain are published in handsome volumes
carefully edited, so that the whole world may read them.
Year by year enlarges the ability of the American
scholar to inspect the sources of British history by
visiting some large library on this side of the Atlantic.

1“ Paper and Parchment,” p. 256.

12 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

I need not dwell upon these facts. One can easily
see that the appearance of fresh material must now
and then oblige us to reverse, and often to modify, our
judgments upon men and events. The student of his-
tory who has once learned how to go to the source
will never be satisfied with working at second hand.
And the multiplication of sources goes on. What I
have mentioned of the British archives has gone on in
other countries, although it is not everywhere that
access has been made so easy. Many secrets of Euro-
pean history are still locked up in the Vatican, to
reward the persistent curiosity of a future generation.
Meanwhile the Italian government publishes, in a
series of magnificent folios, all the original material
that it can find in Italian libraries concerning the dis-
covery of America; and the publication, year by year,
of the records of the India House at Seville keeps
throwing fresh light upon that intricate subject. In
such musty records there is no quarter from which
valuable information may not be derived. A few
years ago I showed, by a comparison of extracts from
old Spanish account books, that the younger Pinzon,
the commander of Columbus’s smallest caravel in
1492, was not absent from Spain during the year
1506; and this little point went a long way toward
settling two or three important historical questions.'

It is not only public documents that thus come for-
ward to help us, but every year witnesses the publica-
tion of private memoirs and correspondence. What a
flood of light is thrown upon the Wars of the Roses by
the Paston Letters, written by members of a Norfolk
family from 1422 to 1509. Public attention was first

1“TDiscovery of America,” II., p. 68.

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 13

drawn to these papers about a century ago, but the
last edition, published in 1872, contained more than four
hundred letters never before printed. In recent years
we have added to our resources for studying American
history many new letters of Patrick Henry, George
Mason, Gouverneur Morris, John Dickinson, Manas-
seh Cutler, the older and younger Tyler, and many
others. Most important of all, in some respects, are
the Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson, last
royal governor of Massachusetts, published in London
about ten years ago by one of his great-grandsons; it
is impossible to study this book without having one’s
conception of the beginnings of the American Revo-
lution in some points slightly, in others profoundly,
modified. 7

In curious ways things keep turning up for the first
time or else attracting fresh attention. A certain
beautiful map, made in Lisbon between September 7
and November 19, 1502, has been lying now for nearly
four centuries-in the Ducal Library at Modena, where
it was left by the husband of Lucretia Borgia. About
fifteen years ago it was noticed that this map con-
tains a delineation of the peninsula of Florida, with
twenty-two Spanish names on the coast, several of
them misunderstood and deformed by the Portuguese
draughtsman. As this is positive proof that Florida
was visited by Spaniards before September 7, 1502,
the long-neglected map has suddenly become a histori-
cal document of the first importance.

Again, during our Revolutionary War a certain
British adventurer, named Charles Lee, was at one
time the senior general under Washington in the Con-
tinental army. Having been taken prisoner by the

14 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

British and locked up in the City Hall at New York,
he tried to mend his fortunes by giving treasonable aid
to the enemy, and in an elaborate paper he unfolded
what seemed to him the best plan for overthrowing
the Americans. General Howe’s secretary, Sir Henry
Strachey, carried this paper home to England, with
other papers, and stowed them all away in the library
of his country house in Somerset. There, after a
slumber of more than eighty years, Lee’s treasonable
paper was found, and it became necessary to rewrite
nearly two years of our military history. Still more
curious was the career of the manuscript “ History of
Plymouth,” by William Bradford, one of the first gov-
ernors of the colony. This precious manuscript was
used and quoted by several New England writers, and
came into the possession of the Rev. Thomas Prince,
pastor of the Old South Church, who died in 1758.
This learned antiquarian kept his books in a little
room in the steeple, which he used as a study, and
bequeathed them to the church.’ After the British
troops evacuated Boston in 1779, it was presently
found that the Bradford MS. had vanished. Perhaps
some officer had read it with interest and confiscated
it to his own uses. At all events, it turned up in 1853
in the Bishop of London’s palace at Fulham, and it
has since been published, as the very corner-stone of
New England history. A fragment of the same Goy-
ernor Bradford’s letter-book was found in a grocer shop
in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and was published in 1794.
This reminds one of the first folio of the Spanish his-
torian Oviedo, printed in 1526. Of this valuable book
only two copies are known to be in existence, and one
1 Hill’s “History of the Old South Church,” II., p. 54.

2 ——— re

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OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 15

of these was rescued from a butcher in Madrid just as
he was tearing a sheet from it to wrap a sirloin of
beef which a servant-girl had purchased. It has always
been a matter of regret that we have had no minutes
of the proceedings of the Congress which was assem-
bled in New York in 1765 for considering the Stamp
Act, but I am told that such minutes have lately been
discovered in a chest of old papers, soaked and mouldy,
under a leaky roof in a Maryland attic. But this is
nothing to the Rip van Winkle slumber of Aristotle’s
essay on the Constitution of Athens, from which Euro-
pean scholars used to quote as late as the sixth century
after Christ, but of which nothing has been seen since
the ninth century until the other day a copy was found
in an Egyptian tomb. On one side of the sheets of
papyrus is an account of receipts and expenditures
kept by the steward or bailiff of a gentleman’s private
estate in the years 78 and 79 after Christ; on the
other side is the long-lost essay of Aristotle, a most
valuable contribution to Greek history, which now,
since its publication in 1891, may be read like any
other Greek book. From other Egyptian tombs have
been recovered a part of one of the lost tragedies of
Euripides, interesting passages from Athenian orators,
and the account of the Crucifixion from the Greek
gospel attributed by the early Fathers to St. Peter, —
an intensely interesting narrative, which was published
in London in 1894.

In recalling such illustrations, one is in danger of
straying from one’s main thesis, and so I will only add
that, with the progress of the arts, there are found
various new ways of making original materials ac-
cessible. Here photography has done wonders. Old

16 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

parchments can be reproduced with strictest accuracy,
with all their stains and rents and cracks and
smooches, and with our magnifying-glass we may
patiently scrutinize each small detail and satisfy our-
selves as to whether it has been rightly interpreted.
A beautiful example of this is furnished by the book
of an American scholar, whose premature death
science mourns. “The Finding of Wineland,” by
Arthur Middleton Reeves, contains complete photo-
graphic facsimiles of the three famous Icelandic manu-
scripts which tell of the Norse discovery of America.
Another example is the gigantic work of another
American, Benjamin Stevens, who is publishing in
London a hundred volumes of diplomatic correspond-
ence relating to the American Revolution, the whole
of it reproduced by photography. The time has thus
arrived when the scholar, without stirring from his
chimney-corner, may send by mail to distant countries
and obtain strict copies of things that it would once
have cost months of travelling to see. It is not hoped
that the time will come when an occasional literary
pilgrimage, with its keen pleasures, can be quite dis-
pensed with; nor is it likely to come. But we see
how much has been done toward bringing the his-
torian face to face with his sources of information.
The increasing disposition to insist upon knowledge
at first hand, which distinguishes the new from the
old ways of treating history, is but one phase of the
scientific and realistic spirit of the age in which we
live. It is one of the marks of the growing intel-
lectual maturity that comes with civilization. There
is nothing to show that the highly trained minds of
the present day are wider in grasp or deeper in pene-

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 17

tration than those of many past ages, but in some re-
spects they are more mature than those of any past
age, and one chief symptom of this maturity is the
strict deference paid to facts. This marks the his-
toric spirit as it marks the scientific spirit. In children
the respect for facts is very imperfectly developed.
The presence of wild exaggeration or deliberate fic-
tion in children’s stories does not necessarily imply
dishonesty or love of lying. The child’s world is not
coldly realistic, it is full of make-believe; it has sub-
jective needs that demand expression even if objective
truthfulness gets somewhat slighted. The Italians
have a pithy proverb, Sz zon e vero e ben, trovato,
which defies literal translation into English, but which
means, If it isn’t true, at all events, it hits the mark.
In the childish type of a story, it is above all things
desired to hit the mark, to produce the effect. Edifi-
cation is the prime requisite; accuracy is subordinate.
There never was an adult mind more scrupulously
loyal to fact than that of Charles Darwin, but in a
chapter of autobiography he says: “I may here con-
fess that as a little boy I was much given to inventing
deliberate falsehoods, and this was always done for the
sake of causing excitement. For instance, I once
gathered much valuable fruit from my father’s trees
and hid it in the shrubbery, and then ran in breathless
haste to spread the news that I had discovered a hoard
of stolen fruit.”' This kind of romancing is not
peculiar to children, but continues to characterize the
untrained adult mind, as in the yarns of old soldiers
and sailors, and it is liable to persist wherever one’s
professional pursuits call for intense devotion to some

1 Darwin’s “ Life and Letters,” I., p. 28.

18 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

immediate practical object. Strong partisanship in
politics or in theology is thus unfavourable to accu-
racy of statement, and the advocates of sundry social
reforms are noted for a tendency to “draw the long
bow.” Since edification is the first desideratum, the
facts must be squeezed and twisted, if need be, so as
to furnish it. “ They can bear. it, poor things,” we
can fancy our preacher saying; “they are used to it.”

A certain obtuseness, or lack of sensitive perception,
with regard to truthful accuracy has thus been widely
prevalent among mankind. At times this has shown
itself in the production of pseudonymous literature,
or books bearing the names of other persons than
their real authors. The two centuries preceding and
the two centuries following the Christian era were
especially an age in which pseudonymous literature
was fashionable, and to this class belong some writings
of great importance in the early Church. There was
no dishonesty in this, no intention to deceive the
public. It was simply one of the crude methods first
adopted without premeditation when earnest preachers
of novel doctrines sought to influence communities on
a wide scale by the written rather than the spoken
word. Any book that contained ideas known or
believed to be those of some eminent teacher was
liable to be ascribed to him as its author. And the
claim, uncritically made, was uncritically accepted.

In this connection may be mentioned the common
practice of ancient historians in inventing speeches.
When Thucydides, for example, describes the inter-
esting debate at Sparta that ushered in the Pelo-
ponnesian War, he makes all the characters talk in
the first person, —the Corinthian envoys, the envoy

—

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY Ig

from Athens, the venerable King Archidamas, the
implacable Jingo Sthenelaidas; but the words that
came from their lips are the words of the historian.
He knows in general the kind of sentiments that
each one represented, and he makes up their speeches
accordingly. No doubt the readers of Thucydides
understood how this was done, and nobody was misled
by it; but a critical age would not tolerate such a
fashion. The critical scholar wants either the real
thing or nothing; when inverted commas are used
in connection with the first person singular, he wants
to see the very words that came from the speaker,
even with their faults of grammar or of taste. Half
a century ago the letters of George Washington were
edited by the late President Sparks of Harvard, who
felt himself called upon to amend them. Where the
writer said “Old Put,” the editor would change it to
“General Putnam,” and where Washington exclaims
that “things are in a devil of a state,” he is made to
observe that “our affairs have reached a deplorable
condition.” This sort of editing belongs to the o/d
ways of treating history. The spirit of the new ways
was long ago expressed by honest Oliver Cromwell,
when he said to the artist, “ Paint me as I am — mole
and all!”

It has become difficult for us, in these days of
punctilious antiquarian realism, to understand the
tolerance of anachronisms that formerly prevailed in
literature and on the stage, when in the tragedies of
Corneille and Racine the wrathful Achilles and Aga-
memnon, king of men, not only reviled each other
in the court phrases of Versailles, but strutted about
in bag-wigs and lace ruffles, while Klytemnestra lifted

20 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

her ample hoop-skirts in a graceful courtesy. In such
matters our keener historic sense has become exacting.
A few years ago, when I visited one of the Alaska
missions, my attention was called to a large picture
of the Adoration of the Magi, painted by a young
Indian. It was a remarkable piece of work, and had
some points of real merit, but it was noticeable that
all the faces—those of the Virgin and Child, of
St. Joseph and the Wise Men — were Indian faces.
This red man’s method was the primitive method.
The age of Louis XIV. had not quite outgrown it.
But the change since then has been like the change
from coaches to railways., History is made to serve
the arts, and in turn has pressed the arts into her
service. Sculptor and architect, painter and poet,
must alike delve in the past for principles and for
illustrations. We have even known the conscientious
poet to set public opinion right on a matter of history.
One of the commonplaces of history, one of the things
that everybody knows, is that Cotton Mather was one
of the chief instigators and promoters of the witchcraft
horrors in Salem; yet, like many of the things that
everybody knows, it is not true. The notion started
in a Slanderous publication by one of Mather’s
enemies, and was repeated parrot-like by one his-
torian after another, including the late George Ban-
croft, until it occurred to the poet Longfellow to take
some of the incidents of the Salem witchcraft as the
theme of a tragedy. In order to catch the very spirit
of 1692, the poet studied with his customary critical
thoroughness the original papers relating to the affair,
until he perceived that Cotton Mather’s part in it was
not an instigating but a restraining part, and that if

j
}

i
_
"7

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 21

his written injunctions had been heeded not one of
the nineteen victims could have been sent to the
gallows. When the poem was published, exhibiting
the great clergyman in this new light, some sage
critics shook their heads and muttered, “ Poetic
license!” But it has been abundantly proved that
Longfellow was quite right.

I have said enough about going to original sources.
It is time to point out a different sort of contrast be-
tween old and new ways of treating history. Let us con-
sider how history began. In primitive times, of which
modern savage life is a wayside survival, after a tribe
had returned from a successful campaign, there was a
grand celebration. Amid feast and hilarity, booty
was divided and captives were slaughtered. Then
the warriors painted their faces and danced about the
fire, while medicine-men chanted the prowess of the
victorious chieftain and boasted the number of ene-
mies slain. There were also sacrifices to the tutelar
ghost-deities, and homage was paid to their ancestral
virtues. In such practices epic poetry and history had
their common origin, and it must be said that to this
day history retains some of the traces of its savage
infancy. With most people it is still little more than
a glorified form of ancestor-worship. One sees this
not only in the difficulty of arousing general interest
in events that have happened at a distance, but also in
the absurdly narrow views which different countries
or different sections of the same country take with
regard to matters of common interest. In reading
French historians one perpetually feels the presence
of the tacit assumption that divides the human race
into Frenchmen and Barbarians; but in this regard

22 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

Frenchmen, though perhaps the most hopeless, are by
no means the only sinners. Through the literature
of all nations runs that same ludicrous assumption that
our people are better than other people, and from this
it is but a short step to the kindred assumption that the
same national acts which are wrongful in other people
are meritorious in ourselves. The feelings which
underlie these assumptions are simply evanescent
forms of the feelings which in a savage state of society
make warfare perpetual, and they are in no wise com-
mendable. Their most stupid and contemptible phase
is that which prompts the different sections of a com-
mon country to twit and flout one another with the
various misdeeds of their respective ancestors. Such
pettiness of outlook is incompatible with an intelligent
conception of the career of mankind. That some
people have been more favourably situated than others,
that some have accomplished more in sundry direc-
tions than others, is not to be denied. The study of
such facts and their causes is one of fascinating inter-
est, and forms part of the most important work of
the historian; but so long as he allows his views to
be coloured by fondness for one people as such, and
dislike for another people as such, his conclusions are
sure to be warped and to some extent weakened. The
late Mr. Freeman was a historian of vast knowledge,
wide sympathies, and unusual breadth of view, but
he was afflicted by two inveterate prejudices, — one
against Frenchmen, the other against the House of
Austria, —and the damage thereby caused is flagrant
in some parts of his field of work and traceable in
many more.

History must not harbour prejudices, because the

See - -—-—~ —

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 23

spirit proper for history is the spirit proper for science.
The two are identical. The word “history” is a
Greek word, originally meaning “inquiry.” Aristotle
named one of his great works “a history concerning
animals,” whence from Pliny and in modern usage we
often hear of “natural history.” It is the business of
the historian to inquire into the past experience of the
human race, in order to arrive at general views that
are correct, in which case they will furnish lessons
useful for the future. It is a task of exceeding deli-
cacy, and the dispassionate spirit of science is needed
for its successful performance. Science does not love
or hate its subjects of investigation; the historian
must exercise like self-control. I do not mean that he
should withhold his moral judgment; he will respect
intelligence and bow down to virtue, he will expose
stupidity and denounce wickedness, wherever he en-
counters them, but he will not lose sight of the ulti-
mate aim to detect the conditions under which certain
kinds of human actions thrive or fail; and that is a
scientific aim.

Yet another difference between old and new methods
invites our attention. The old-fashioned history, still
retaining the marks of its barbaric origin, dealt with
little save kings and battles and court intrigues. It
consisted mainly of details concerning persons. Since
the middle of the eighteenth century more attention
has been paid to the history of commerce and finance,
to geographical circumstances, to the social conditions
of peoples, to the changes in beliefs, to the progress of
literature and art. A modern book which is remark-
able for the skill with which it follows all the threads
in the story of national progress simultaneously, and in

24 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

one vast and superb picture shows each element co-
operating with the others, is the well-known “ History
of the English People” by John Richard Green. Both
Green and Freeman were friends of mine, and I am
tempted to relate an incident which illustrates their
different points of view. Freeman’s conception of
history was more restricted, though within his nar-
rower sphere he took a vast sweep. Most people
remember his definition, “ History is past politics and
politics are present history.” One day he took Green
to task in a friendly way: “I say, Johnny, if you'll just
leave out all that stuff about art and literature and
how people dressed and furnished their houses, your
book will be all right; as it is, you are spoiling its
unity.” Fortunately this advice went unheeded. The
poetic quality of Green’s genius controlled that im-
mense wealth of material without injuring the unity
of the narrative, and gave us a book that represents
the highest grade of historical work in our time and is
likely to live as a classic.

In the first half of the nineteenth century some
confused attempts were made to treat history like a
physical science, and trace the destinies of nations to
peculiarities in climate and soil, ignoring moral causes.
There was also an inclination to underrate the work of
great men, and ascribe all results to vaguely conceived
general tendencies. Against these views there came a
spasmodic reaction which asserted that history is noth-
ing but the biographies of great men. The former
view was most conspicuously represented by Buckle,
the latter by Carlyle and Froude. Concerning the
point at issue between them, it may be said that since
general tendencies are manifested only in the thoughts

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 25

and actions of men, it is these that the historian must
study, and that as causal agencies a Cromwell or a
Luther may count for more than a million ordinary
men; but after all, our ultimate source of enlighten-
ment still lies in the study of the general conditions
under which the activity of our Cromwell or Luther
was brought forth. Most minds find pleasure in per-
sonal incidents, while a few have the knowledge and
the capacity for sustained thinking that are needed
for penetrating to the general causes. There is a type
of mind that is interested chiefly in what is unusual or
catastrophic; but it is a more scientific type that is
interested in tracing the silent operation of common
and familiar facts. By this latter method physical
science has prospered in recent days as never before,
and the same has been the case with the study of
history.

Allusion has been made to the useful lessons that
may be found in the study of the past. In searching
for such lessons great care must be taken to avoid the
fallacy of reasoning from loose analogies. This com-
mon fallacy is injured by the pernicious habit of
arguing from words without stopping to consider the
things to which the words are applied. For example,
many Americans seem to suppose that our govern-
ment is like that of France because both are called
republics, and unlike that of England because the lat-
ter is represented by a hereditary sovereign. In point
of fact, the government of France is substantially the
same, whether it is called an empire or a republic; in
neither case do the French people have self-govern-
ment; the resemblances to the United States are super-
ficial and the differences are fundamental. Whereas,

26 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

on the other hand, the people of England govern them-
selves as effectively as the people of the United States,
and the differences are superficial and the resemblances
are fundamental. Yet, as a rule, people cannot free
themselves from the trammels of names, and any com-
munity of ignorant half-breed Indians ruled by an
irresponsible despot is thought worthy of our special
sympathy if that despot happens to be labelled presi-
dent rather than king.

A flagrant instance of reasoning from loose analogies
was furnished about a century ago by an English
member of Parliament, William Mitford, who wrote a
history of Greece under the influence of his over-
mastering dread of parliamentary reform. His first
volume appeared in 1784, when the reformers seemed
on the eve of the victory which they did not really
win till 1832. Mitford wished to show that democracy
is always and everywhere an unmitigated evil, and he
used the history of Athens to point his moral, although
Athenian democracy was not really like anything in
the modern world. A more curious distortion of facts
than Mitford’s “ History of Greece” has seldom been
put into print.

When Grote, half a century later, wrote his magnifi-
cent “ History of Greece,” he appeared as the champion
of Athens. He, too, was a member of Parliament, an
advanced free-thinker and democrat. It was as natu-
ral for him to love the Athenians as for Mitford to
hate them, and possibly his sympathies may once or
twice have urged him a little too far. But his mental
powers and his scholarship were immeasurably greater
than Mitford’s, and he did not try to force a lesson
from his facts; he tried to understand the people

a

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 27

whom he described. The result was a picture of the
old Greek world so faithful and so brilliant that it can-
not soon be superseded. A German history of Greece
was afterward written by Ernst Curtius, —a charming
book, rich in learning and thought. But the experi-
ence of the Englishman as the native of a free country
gave him an advantage in understanding the Athe-
nians, the lack of which we feel seriously when we
read the German work.: A similar deficiency, due to
similar shortcomings in political training, we find in
one of the greatest works of the nineteenth century,
Mommsen’s “ History of Rome.”

But while Grote achieved such success in depicting
the free world of Hellas, he was less successful when
he came to the Macedonian Conquest, and with the
close of the generation contemporary with Alexander
the Great he seemed to lose his interest in the subject.
His history stops at that point with words of farewell
that echo the mournful spirit of baffled Demosthenes.
The spectacle of free Greece was so beautiful and in-
spiring that one cannot bear to see it come to an end.
Yet the diffusion of Greek culture through the Roman
world, from the Euphrates to the shores of Britain, is
a theme of no less interest and importance. In many
ways the learned and thoughtful books of Mr. Mahaffy
illustrate this point. It may suffice here to observe
that, without a careful study of the three centuries
following Alexander, one cannot hope to understand
the circumstances of the greatest event in all his-
tory, the spreading of Christianity over the Roman
Empire.

We are thus led to notice another important dif-
ference between the old and the new ways. The old-

28 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

fashioned student of history was apt to confine his
attention to the so-called classical period, such as the
age of Perikles, or of Augustus, or of Elizabeth, or of
Louis XIV. Such a habit is fatal to the acquirement
of anything like a true perspective in history. What
should we say of the botanist who should confine him-
self to Jacqueminot roses and neglect what gardeners
call weeds? How far would the ornithologist ever get
who should study only nightingales and birds of para-
dise? In truth the dull ages which no Homer has
sung nor Tacitus described have sometimes been criti-
cal ages for human progress. Such was the eighth
century of the Christian era, which witnessed the rise
of the Carlovingians ; and such again was the eleventh,
the time of Hildebrand and William the Norman.
This restriction of the view to literary ages has had
much to do with the popular misconception of the
thousand years that elapsed between the reign of
Theodoric the Great and the discovery of America.
For many reasons that period may rightly be called the
Middle Ages; but the popular mind is apt to lump
those ten centuries together, as if they were all alike,
and to apply to them the misleading epithet, Dark
Ages. A portion of the darkness is in the minds of
those who use the epithet. The Germanic reorganiza-
tion of Europe, and the fearful struggle with Islam,
did indeed involve a break with the ancient civiliza-
tion, but there was no such absolute gulf as that which
exists in the popular imagination. The darkest age
was perhaps that of the wicked Frankish queens,
Brunhild and Fredegonda; but the career of civiliza-
tion was then far more secure than it had been a
thousand years earlier, in the age of Perikles, when all

-~ 7 1

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 29

Europe, except a few Greek cities, was immersed in
dense barbarism.

A similar exclusive devotion to literary or classical
periods leads us to misjudge certain communities as
well as certain ages. Our perspective thus gets warped
in space as well as in time. Few persons realize the
great importance of the Roman Empire of the East,
all the way from Justinian to the iniquitous capture of
Constantinople by the French and Venetians in 1204.
In these ages Constantinople was the chief centre of
culture; through her commercial relations with Genoa,
she exercised a civilizing influence over the whole of
western Europe, and she was the military bulwark of
Christendom first against Saracen, then against Turk,
until at last she succumbed in an evil hour which we
have not yet ceased to mourn. Largely for want of a
period of classical literature the so-called Byzantine
Empire has been grievously underrated.’

But the worst distortion of perspective in our study
of the career of mankind is one of which we have
only lately begun to rid ourselves. It is the distortion
caused by supercilious neglect of the lower races. In
the course of the fifteenth century the expansion of
maritime enterprise brought civilized Europeans for
the first time into contact with races of queer-looking
men with black or red skins, often hideous in feature
and uncouth in their customs. They called such
people savages. and the name has been loosely applied
to a vast number of groups of men in widely different
stages of culture, but all alike falling far short of the
European level. Such people have no literature, and

1Tn the original manuscript Dr. Fiske makes a marginal annotation —
“ Also ill feeling of western Europe toward Greek Church.”

30 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

their customs are often unpleasant; and so they have
been unduly despised. Fortunately travellers have
given copious descriptions of savage and barbarous
tribes, but they have been lazily accepted as freaks
or oddities, and it is only lately that they have been
subjected to serious study, comparison, and analysis.
It is not too much to say that this has wrought a
greater change in our conception of human history
than all other causes put together. For it has formed
the occasion for a vast extension of the comparative
method. Early in the present century something like
a new Renaissance was begun when Englishmen in
India began to study Sanskrit, and were struck with
its resemblance to the languages of Europe. The
first result of such studies was the beginning of
comparative philology in the establishment of the
Aryan family of languages; pretty soon there fol-
lowed the comparative study of myths and folk-tales ;
and then came comparative jurisprudence, which, for
the world of English readers, is chiefly associated
with the beautiful writings of Sir Henry Maine.
Next it began to appear that many problems which
remain insoluble so long as we confine our attention
to the Aryan world soon yield up their secret if we
extend our comparison so as to include the speech,
the beliefs, and the customs of savages. In taking
this great step the name of an American investigator,
the late Lewis Morgan, with his profound classifica-
tion of stages of human culture, stands foremost; and
the work of our Bureau of Ethnology at Washington,
under the masterly direction of Major Powell, is
doing more toward a correct interpretation of the
beginnings of human society than was ever done

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 31

before. It is proved beyond a doubt that the insti-
tutions of civilized society are descended from institu-
tions like those now to be observed in savage society.
Savages and barbarians are simply races that have
remained in phases of culture which more civilized
races have outgrown; and hence one helps to explain
the other. Certain obscure local institutions, for
example, in ancient Greece and Rome, have been
made quite intelligible by the study of similar insti-
tutions among American Indians. In these ways
history, without ceasing to be a study of individuals
and nations, has come to be in the broadest sense
the study of the growth and decay of institutions.
Thus for a good many reasons we see that the new
ways of treating history are better than the old. We
are better equipped for getting at the truth, and it isa
larger kind of truth when we have got it. Yet the
historian is forgetting his highest duty if he allows
himself to become unjust to the men of past times.
There were giants in former days, and if we can see
farther than they, it is because we stand upon their
shoulders. Nor will all our boasted science make
great historians, in the absence of the native genius.
Let us never fail in reverence to the masters of our
craft. The world will never know a more delightful
narrator than Herodotus, careful and critical as we
now know him to be, wide in outlook and keenly in-
quisitive, with his touches of quaint philosophy and
his delicious Ionic diction. Or consider Thucydides,
with his mournful story of the war in which the Pelo-
ponnesian states combine against Athens, one of the
greatest crimes known to history, — somewhat such a
crime as war between the United States and Great

32 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY

Britain would be to-day. In the rugged sentences of
Thucydides we are brought face to face with the most
powerful intellect except Shakespeare’s that ever dealt
with historic themes. Thence it is indeed a falling off
to the mild, urbane, if you please superficial, Xenophon;
but who can weary of that exquisite Attic prose, or
read without choking the cry of the Ten Thousand
on catching sight of the friendly sea? Then a word
must be said of grave and wise Polybius, most trust-
worthy of guides, and brilliant Tacitus, pithy and pun-
gent, but now and then too fond of pointing a moral
and needing at such times to be taken with a grain
of salt. The pictures of the ancient world in Plu-
tarch, though not always accurate in detail, have an
ethical value that is beyond ‘price. We must not
forget Gregory of Tours, the honest, credulous bishop
whose uncouth Latin gives such a vivid portrayal of
Merovingian times; nor charming Froissart, with his
medizeval French, bringing before us a world of belted
knights and jewelled dames, where common people
have no claim to notice. A century later the states-
manlike Commines and much slandered Machiavelli
show us the victory of Reynard over Isegrim, of or-
ganizing intelligence over the cruder forces of feudalism,
while the saintly Las Casas tells of the discovery of
America and the deeds of the Spanish conquerors,
In Vico we see a great intellect failing in the pre-
mature attempt to make history scientific, and then
we pass on to Voltaire, the witchery of whose match-
less style in his “Essai sur les Mceurs” reveals a
grasp of universal history in perspective such as no
man before him had attained. Finally, with a grasp
scarcely inferior to Voltaire’s, the gigantic learning of

=

——

Ye, a

OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 33

Gibbon, aided by marvellous artistic sense in the
grouping of huge masses of detail, gives us what is in
many ways the greatest book of history that ever was
written. It now needs to be supplemented at many
points, but it is not easy to look forward to a time
when it can be superseded. It is curious to note the
contrast between this book and one that used always
to be associated with it in men’s minds. “ The History
of England,” by David Hume, has lived more than a
century, partly because of its fine narrative style, partly
because of the absence, until recently, of any better
book of convenient size; but it was never in any sense
a great history, and it is now worse than worthless to
the general reader. The reason for this-is its lack of
knowledge of the subject with which it deals. It is
the superficial and careless work of a man of brilliant
genius. In contrast with this the untiring patience
of Gibbon, his exhaustless wealth of knowledge, his
almost miraculous accuracy, his disinterested calmness
of spirit, his profundity of critical discernment, com-
bined with the artistic temperament to produce a work
as enduring as the Eternal City itself. And with this
example my concluding advice to the student of new
methods is, Forget not to profit by the old masters.

II

JOHN MILTON

7

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eric

Ss ee eee,

II
JOHN MILTON

To bring a sketch of John Milton within the com-
pass of a single hour seems much like attempting the
feat described by Jules Verne, of making the journey
around the world in eighty days. In the dimensions
of that human personality there is a cosmic vastness
which one can no more comprehend in a few general
statements than one could sum up in some brief for-
mula the surface of our planet, with all its varied con-
figuration, all its rich and marvellous life. There have
been other men, indeed, more multifarious in their
worth than Milton, men whose achievements have
been more diversified. Doubtless the genius of
Michael Angelo was more universal, Shakespeare
touched a greater number of springs in the human
heart; and such a spectacle as that of Goethe, making
profound and startling discoveries in botany and com-
parative anatomy while busy with the composition of
“Faust,” we do not find in the life of Milton. A mere
catalogue dealing with the Puritan poet and his works
would be shorter than many another catalogue. But
when we seek words in which to convey a critical esti-
mate of the man and what he did, we find that we have
a world upon our hands. Professor Masson, of the
University of Edinburgh, has written the “ Life of Mil-
ton” in six large octavos ; he has given as much space
to the subject as Gibbon gave to the “ Decline and

37

38 JOHN MILTON

Fall of the Roman Empire,” yet we do not feel that he
has treated it at undue length.

The Milton family belonged to the yeomanry of
Oxfordshire. They were just such plain, brave, intel-
ligent people as the great body of those who migrated
to New England. About five miles from Oxford
there lived, in the reign of Elizabeth, one Richard
Milton, who was a ranger or keeper of the Forest of
Shotover. In 1563 there was born to him a son John,
just a few months before the birth of William Shake-
speare in the neighbouring town of Stratford-on-Avon.
Richard Milton was a stanch Roman Catholic. In
due course of time his son John became a student at
Oxford, and was converted to Protestantism. One
day the father picked up an English Bible in the son’s
room. High words ensued; the young man, sturdy
and defiant, was cast off and disinherited, and so pres-
ently made his way to London and set up in business
asa scrivener. In that business were combined the
occupations of the notary public with some of those of
the solicitor. This John Milton not only took affida-
vits, but drew up contracts and deeds, and probably
helped his clients to invest their money. The selling
of law books and stationery was also part of the scrive-
ner’s business, in which professional man and trades-
man were thus quaintly mixed. The scrivener Milton
was distinguished for intelligence and integrity; he
became wealthy, or at any rate extremely comfortable
in circumstances, and he won general respect and con-
fidence. At the age of thirty-seven he married a lady
named Sarah Bradshaw. In the simple, cosey fashion
of those days, the family lived over the office or shop,
which was in Bread Street, Cheapside, with no street

JOHN MILTON 39

number*to mark it, but the sign of an eagle with out-
stretched wings, the family crest of the Miltons.

It was here, at the Spread Eagle, that the scrivener’s
eldest son, John Milton, the poet, was born on the oth
of December, 1608. The house, which was afterward
burned in the Great Fire of 1666, stood in the very
heart of London, which was then a city with scarcely
200,000 inhabitants and had not quite lost the rural
look and quality. The house stood not only within
the sound of Bow bells, but in the very shadow of the
belfry where they were hung, and hard by was the
Mermaid Tavern, whither one can fancy that Shake-
speare, resorting on his last visit to London in 1614,
may well have passed by the scrivener’s door and
smiled upon the beautiful boy of six with his delicate
rosy cheeks and wealth of auburn curls. Throughout
life, Milton’s personal beauty attracted attention; the
great soul was enshrined in a worthy tabernacle.
Several portraits of him, painted at different ages, are
still preserved. We can imagine the honest pride
with which the father took him, when ten years old,
to sit to Cornelius Jansen. The charming picture,
which has often been engraved, lights up for us the
story of the poet’s childhood. It shows us a grave
but sweet and happy face, of which the prevailing
character, as Professor Masson has well said, is “a
lovable seriousness.” Under it the first engraver in-
scribed these lines from “ Paradise Regained ” : —

‘When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing ; all my mind was set
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do,
What might be public good: myself I thought

Born to that end, born to promote all truth
And righteous things.”

40 JOHN MILTON

There is no doubt that this consecration of himself
to a lofty ideal of life was begun in early childhood.
In this earnestness of mood, this clear recognition of
the seriousness of life and its duties, Milton was a born
Puritan. But along with this general temperament, the
lines here quoted tell us of something more. The
youthful Milton was conscious, dimly at first but more
distinctly with advancing years, of a mission which he
was sent into the world to fulfil, An acquaintance
of his, John Aubrey, tells us that he had begun to
write verses before his tenth year. It seems clear that
he was still very young when the vocation of the poet
came before his mind as the calling which he should
like to adopt, to which he would fain consecrate his
life. But the true poet is far more than a builder of
rhymes; he is the man who sees the deepest truths
that concern humanity, and knows how to proclaim
them with power and authority such as no other kind
of man save the poet can wield. So the boy Milton
felt himself “born to promote all truth and righteous
things,” and to this end he became eager to learn and
know, in order to act for the public good. By his
twelfth year the raging thirst for knowledge had so far
possessed him that he commonly sat at his books until
after midnight.

It was in a refined and pleasant home that this boy
grew up. His father was at once indulgent and wise,
his mother gentle; there was an older sister and a
younger brother; good company came to the house.
The scrivener Milton was a musical composer of merit
enough to be mentioned in contemporary books along-
side of such masters as Tallis and Orlando Gibbons.
The house in Bread Street had an organ, upon which

JOHN MILTON 4l

the young Milton learned to play with skill and power.

He also played on the bass viol, and to the end of his
days his interest in music never flagged. We may
suppose that from the father’s genius the son inherited
that delicate appreciation of vocal sounds which makes
his poetry the most melodious ever written in English,
— sometimes rivalled, but never excelled, by Shake-
speare in his sonnets and in the snatches of song that
sparkle in his plays.

In those days, precocious boys were almost always
intended by their parents for the Church, and such was
the case with Milton. From his twelfth to his six-
teenth year he went to the school in St. Paul’s church-
yard, which the famous reformer Colet had founded
a century before. At the same time, he read at home
with a tutor, a canny Scotch Presbyterian, named
Thomas Young. At the age of sixteen, besides his
Greek and Latin, Milton had learned French and
Italian thoroughly, and had made a good beginning in
Hebrew. Soon after his sixteenth birthday, he entered
college, but not at Oxford, where his father had studied.
No reason is assigned for sending him to Cambridge,
but the reason seems self-evident. The inveterate
Toryism of Oxford —if I may call it by the word
which came into use a few years later— must have
been distasteful to his Puritan family. The eastern
counties were becoming more and more a hotbed for
free thinking in religion and politics, probably because
of their frequent intercourse with the Netherlands.

- The atmosphere of Cambridge was charged with

Puritanism and denial of the divine right of kingship ;
one might have seen there many harbingers of the
coming storm. Early in 1625 Milton entered Christ’s

42 JOHN MILTON

College, Cambridge, and there he lived for seven years
and a half. His study and bedroom, unaltered since
his time, are still shown to visitors; and in the beauti-
ful garden — most beautiful, perhaps, of the gardens
in that exquisite country town — you may see the mul-
berry tree, many centuries old, with its decrepit boughs
still resting on the wooden props which Milton’s loving
care placed under them.

Of his life at Cambridge we have not many details.
More than once his proud, independent spirit got him
into difficulties. There is a story that he was once
flogged by one of the tutors, but it is not well sup-
ported; he seems, however, to have been at one time
punished with what in an American college would be
called “suspension.” The cause was not neglect of
study or serious misbehaviour, but defiant indepen-
dence. He had none of youth’s wild or vicious in-
clinations; then, as always, his conduct was without
spot or flaw. It was part of his lofty conception of
the poet’s calling that the poet’s soul should admit no
kind of defilement in thought or deed. No priest or
prophet ever more devoutly revered the work for
which God had chosen him than this Puritan poet.
The feeling of religious consecration and self-devotion
finds strong expression in the sonnet written on his
reaching the age of twenty-three : —

“ How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth,
Stolen on his wing my three-and-twentieth year !
My hasting days fly on with full career,
But my late spring no bud or blossom sheweth.
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth,
That I to manhood am arrived so near,

And inward ripeness doth much less appear
That some more timely-happy spirits endureth.

JOHN MILTON 43

Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow,
It shall be still in strictest measure even
To that same lot, however mean or high,
Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven ; —
All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.”

One is reminded by this of Goethe’s simile of the star
which, without hasting but without resting, fulfils the
destiny assigned it. The spirit is that of the old monk-
ish injunction, to study as if for life eternal but to live
prepared to die to-morrow, the very spirit of consecra-
tion to a lofty purpose." That Milton at the age of
twenty-three should have felt any lack of inward ripe-
ness seems odd when we know that his scholarship
was already generally recognized as greater than had
ever been seen at Cambridge, save perhaps when Eras-
mus was teaching Greek there. When Milton took
his master’s degree the next year he was urged to stay
and accept a fellowship. But at that time it was neces-
sary for the fellow of a college to be in holy orders,
and although Milton’s parents had meant that he
should be a clergyman, he had by this time discovered
that he required more liberty of thought and speech
than could be found in the Church. In his own forcible
words, “ I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence
before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun
with servitude and forswearing.” So he left Cam-
bridge and went home. For a moment he thought of
taking law as a profession, but it was clear that such
a course would tend to defeat his cherished purpose of
writing a great poem, and the idea was abandoned.

1“ Disce ut semper victurus vive, ut cras moriturus,” of which he has
given so admirable a translation, became the motto of Dr. Fiske’s life, and
was graven above the hearth in his library at “ Westgate,” in Cambridge.

44 JOHN MILTON

Milton’s father had retired from business and was
living in plain rural comfort in the pretty village of
Horton, within sight of the towers of Windsor Castle,
and about two hours ride on horseback from London.
It was near enough to allow going into the city to
hear music or to spend an evening at the theatre.
In Horton, the young poet lived at his father’s house
for nearly six delightful years of study and meditation.
He pushed on his studies in Hebrew, including Rab-
binical literature as well as the Bible; and to all this
he added a knowledge of Syriac. With Greek litera-
ture his acquaintance was minute and thorough, and
he seems to have written Greek fluently. But his
mastery of Latin was such as has rarely been equalled.
He not only wrote it, whether prose or verse, with the
same facility as English, but his command of the lan-
guage was such as few of the Roman authors them-
selves had attained. His Latin style has not, indeed,
the elegant perfection of Cicero and Virgil; it toler-
ates, or rather rejoices, in phrases which those writers
would have deemed barbarous; but this does not
come from carelessness or lack of knowledge, it is
done on purpose. Milton was so much at home in
Latin that he would play with it just as James Russell
Lowell delighted in playing with English. It was
none of your dead-and-alive schoolmaster’s Latin, but
a fresh and flowing diction, full of pith and pungency.

During the quiet years at Horton, the chief studies
of Milton were in the history and literature of Italy.
Of English and French literature down to his own
time, he had compassed pretty much all that was
accessible and worth knowing,—a much easier
achievement in those days than it would be now,

JOHN MILTON A5

after these two added centuries of printing. To
Greek history, from early times to the fall of Constan-
tinople, he also gave much attention.

It was at Horton that Milton’s first great poems
were written. More or less meritorious verse in
Greek, Latin, and English he had written at Cam-
bridge; and in the Christmas hymn, written in his
twenty-first year, —

“It was the winter wild,
While the heaven-born child
All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies,”

there are some stanzas of magnificent promise. But
his first important work was “Comus,” a mask per-
formed at Ludlow Castle in 1634. The mask was a
kind of dramatic entertainment, in which scenery and
gorgeous costumes formed a setting for dialogue alter-
nating with music. It was fashionable in England
from the time of Edward III. to the time of Charles I.
Some of the finest specimens of the mask were written
by Ben Jonson, who was still living in 1634. With
further development the mask would probably have
become opera, but its career was suddenly cut short
by Puritanism. ‘“Comus” seems to have been the
last one that was performed. The eminent composer,
Henry Lawes, had undertaken to furnish music for a
mask; he asked his friend Milton to write the words,
and the result was “Comus,” a piece of poetry more
exquisite than had ever before been written in Eng-
land save by Shakespeare. There is an ethereal
delicacy about it that reminds one of the quality of
mind shown in such plays as the “ Tempest ” and the
“Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The late Mark Patti-

46 JOHN MILTON

son has observed that “it was a strange caprice of
fortune that made the future poet of the Puritan epic
the last composer of a Cavalier mask.” But in truth,
while Milton was a typical Puritan for earnestness
and strength of purpose, he was far from sharing the
bigoted and narrow whims of Puritanism. He had
no sympathy whatever with the spirit that condemned
the theatre and tore the organs out of churches and
defaced noble works of art and frowned upon the love
of beauty as a device of Satan. He was independent
even of Puritan fashions, as is shown by his always
wearing his long, auburn locks when a cropped head
was one of the distinguishing marks of a Puritan.
With the same proud independence he approved the
drama and kept up his passion for music. In his
seriousness there was no sourness. A lover of truth
and righteousness, he also worshipped the beautiful.
In his mind there was no antagonism between art and
religion, — art was part of religion; the artist, like the
saint, was inspired by God’s grace. Listen to what
he says of the power of poetic creation, “ This is not
to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal
Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and know-
ledge, and sends out His seraphim with the hallowed
fire of His altar, to touch and purify the life of whom
He pleases.” There is the Puritan doctrine of grace
applied in a manner which few Puritans would have
thought of.

The blithe and sunny temper of Milton is illus-
trated in the two exquisite little poems with Italian
titles he wrote while at Horton,—‘“L’Allegro” or
“The Cheerful Man,” and “Il Penseroso” or ‘“ The
Thoughtful Man.” In them the delicious life he was

JOHN MILTON 47

living in the soft English country finds expression.
Nothing more beautiful has come from human pen.
In the first one, the poet addresses the fair goddess of
Mirth, “so buxom, blithe, and debonair.” In her com-
pany he fain would dwell,

‘In unreproved pleasures free ;
To hear the lark begin his flight,
And singing startle the dull night,
From his watch-tower in the skies,
Till the dappled dawn doth rise.

* * * *
While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before.”

In the bright morning thus ushered in, our poet would
go forth on his walk,

** By hedge row elms on hillocks green,
* * * *
While the ploughman near at hand

Whistles o’er the furrowed land,

And the milkmaid singeth blithe,
And the mower whets his scythe,
And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale.”

As he goes on his way a series of exquisite, home-
like landscape pictures, such as can be seen nowhere
else in such perfection as in England, greets his eye.

‘Russet lawns and fallows gray,
Where the nibbling flocks do stray,
Mountains on whose barren breast
The labouring clouds do often rest ;
Meadows trim with daisies pied,
Shallow brooks and rivers wide.

48 JOHN MILTON

Towers and battlements it sees,
Bosomed high in tufted trees.
* * * *

Hard by a cottage chimney smokes
From betwixt two aged oaks,

Where Corydon and Thyrsis met

Are at their savoury dinner set

Of herbs and other country messes
Which the neat-handed Phillis dresses.”

After the day and evening, with their innocent country
pleasures, have received due mention, the occasional
visit to London is not forgotten.

“Then to the well-trod stage anon,
If Jonson’s learned sock be on,
Or sweetest Shakespeare, fancy’s child,
Warble his native woodnotes wild ;
And ever against eating cares
Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse. . . .

And so on to the final invocation.

“These delights, if thou canst give,
Mirth, with thee I mean to live.”

Nothing could be further from the conventional Puri-
tanism, as remembered in New England, than the mood
in which these verses were conceived. In the com-
panion address to Melancholy, wherein Milton’s
deeper soul finds expression, we have all the earnest-
ness of the Puritan, without the slightest attempt to
suppress or hide the worship of the beautiful. From
the opening line: —

“Hence, vain deluding joys,”

JOHN MILTON 49

we seem to hear a hurried sweep of stringed instru-
ments, till ali at once enters the solemn note of the
organ : —
“Come pensive Nun, devout and pure,
Sober, steadfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain,
Flowing with majestic train.”

The passage is too long for quotation; we must pass
to the evening picture,

“Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
Save the cricket on the hearth,
Or the bellman’s drowsy charm,
To bless the doors from nightly harm.”

Then in silent meditation the scholar recalls the teach-
ings of Plato, and seeks to imagine what may betide
man’s immortal soul when all that is earthly shall have
passed away. He peers into the secrets of science, but
is not forgetful of the varied drama of human life.

“Some time lét gorgeous Tragedy
In sceptred pall come sweeping by.”

With epic and legend and all the storied lore of the
Middle Ages and the Orient, the night passes and the
morning comes with soft showers.

“ And when the sun begins to fling
His flaring beams, me Goddess bring
To arched walks of twilight groves,

* * * *

50 JOHN MILTON

Where the rude axe with heavied stroke
Was never heard the nymphs to daunt,
Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.
There in close covert by some brook,
Where no profaner eye may look,

Hide me from Day’s garish eye,

While the bee with honeyed thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring

With such consort as they keep,

Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.”

Best known of all the passages in this pair of poems is
that in which the poet repairs from the brookside to the
studious cloister, with reminiscences of Cambridge and
that glorious chapel with its “ high embowed roof” and
“storied windows,” its “pealing organs” and “full-
voiced choir,” whence the thought is carried on to
the hermitage with its mossy cell, where the story
ends as it started with the delights of science: —

“Where I may sit and rightly spell
Of every star that heaven doth shew,
And every herb that sips the dew ;
Till old experience do attain
To something like poetic strain.
These pleasures, Melancholy, give,
And I with thee will choose to live.”

These twin poems belong to the class of pastorals
such as were written by Theocritus and Virgil. A
third poem, of similar construction, written at Horton
in 1637, has ever since been recognized as the most
perfect specimen in existence of that kind of poetry.
The framework of “Lycidas” is purely conventional ;
no one but a scholar steeped to the marrow of his bones

JOHN MILTON ea

in ancient literature could have worked under such
conditions without losing something of the freedom
and freshness of his thought. The pastoral form was
admirably adapted to Milton’s purpose; in that com-
pletely artificial and impossible world of shepherds and
shepherdesses, nymphs and fauns, it was easy to keep
the utterance of strong emotion subservient to the
supreme artistic end of beauty for its own sake.
Things could be said, too, which, if explicitly said of
certain persons living in England in 1637, would not
be endured. The occasion of the poem was the death
of Edward King, a young clergyman who had been
Milton’s friend and fellow-student at Cambridge. Mr.
King was drowned in a shipwreck on the Irish Sea, in
crossing from Chester to Dublin; and his sorrowing
friends in Cambridge made up an album of thirty-six
original poems in Greek, Latin, and English, to be
printed as a memorial volume. Most of the poems
were of the crude, trashy sort usually found in such
collections. One of them exclaims: —

“To drown this little world! Could God forget
His covenant which in the clouds he set?
Where was the bow? — but back, my Muse, from hence,
Tis not for thee to question Providence,” etc.

Another says : —

““ Religion was but the position
Of his own judgment: ‘Truth to him alone
Stood naked ; he strung the Art’s chain and knit the ends,
And made divine and human learning friends,” etc.

A third says: —

“Weep forth your tears, then ; pour out all your tide ;
All waters are pernicious since King died.”

52 JOHN MILTON

Another, with somewhat more poetic touch, refers to
sunset :—

“So did thy light, fair soul, itself withdraw
To no dark tomb by nature’s common law,
But set in waves.”

After the rabble of versifiers let us now hear the poet.
We may observe that the impersonation of Mr. King
as the shepherd, Lycidas, while suggested by Greek
conventional forms, is in fortunate harmony with the
familiar Biblical comparison of the clergyman to the
shepherd watching over his flock. How noble is
the music of the well-known opening lines : —

“Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.”

The sad occasion is the death of young Lycidas, the
poet’s fellow-swain : —

“ For we were nurst upon the selfsame hill,
Fed the same flock by fountain, shade, and rill.
Together, both, ere the high lawns appeared,
Under the opening eyelids of the morn,
We drove afield,”

and so proceeds the charming description until the
first change of theme : —

“But O the heavy change, now thou art gone,
Now thou art gone and never must return !
Thee, shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o’ergrown,
And all the echoes mourn.

ee ie Ba

JOHN MILTON 53

The willows and the hazel copses green

Shall now no more be seen

Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays.

As killing as the canker to the rose,

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze,
Or frost to flowers that their gay wardrobe wear,
When first the white thorn blows,

Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd’s ear.”

There follow the invocation to the nymphs, the sub-
lime passage on Fame, “that last infirmity of noble
minds,” and then the shadow procession of figures that
come as mourners, — the herald of Neptune, the tute-
lar deity of the river Cam, and lastly “the pilot of the
Galilean lake,” St. Peter with his massy keys, who,

“. . . shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : —
How well could I have spared for thee, young swain,
Enough of such as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude and climb into the fold!”

In the terrible invective thus introduced we read the
doom of Archbishop Laud and his policy, until, in the
concluding lines, which have greatly puzzled commen-
tators, we seem to see the herdsman with his black
mask and hear the dreadful thud of the two-handed
broadaxe. In the unreal atmosphere of the pastoral
eclogue, such denunciation might be indulged, even in
an age when men were sent to jail for their printed
words.

From this furnace blast of indignation the change
is magical to the wondrously beautiful call for the
flowers : —

“‘ Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,

54 JOHN MILTON

The white pink and the pansy freaked with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk rose and the well-attired woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears :
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,

To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.”

Soon after this invocation, which has in it nothing to
which an ancient Greek like Theocritus might not
have responded with full sympathy, the mood once
more changes, and the triumphant hope of the Chris-
tian finds voice in the following sublime passage. We
shall encounter in the course of it a word of which the
meaning has utterly changed in the last two centuries ;
Milton says “unexpressive” where we should say
“inexpressible ” or “ beyond expression.”

“Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more,
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor.
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore,
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky ;
So Lycidas,.sunk low but mounted high,
Through the dear might of Him that walked the waves,
Where, other groves and other streams along,
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love.
There entertain him all the saints above,
In solemn troops and sweet societies,
That sing and singing in their glory move,
And wipe the tears forever from his eyes.”

From this magnificent organ peal of triumph, the very
next line suddenly changes to a thought that is purely

: ee ee

JOHN MILTON 55

and emphatically pagan; yet so consummate is the
skill with which the varying modes of the poem have
been marshalled that there is nothing abrupt or shock-
ing in the change, but our minds follow in entire
acquiescence : —

“ Now, Lycidas, the shepherds weep no more ;
Henceforth thou art the genius of the shore
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good
To all that wander in that perilous flood.”

The next line shows that this change from the Chris-
tian to the pagan mood was needed in order to intro-
duce properly the exquisite scene that concludes the
poem : —
“Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks and rills,

While the still morn went out with sandals gray,

He touched the tender stops of various quills,

With eager thought warbling his Doric lay:

And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,

And now was dropt into the western bay.

At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue,

To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

It was more than twenty years before the promise
of the last line was fulfilled. Not until 1658 did Mil-
ton turn to fresh woods and pastures new, when he
began to work steadily at “ Paradise Lost.” In that
long interval he wrote no poetry save a few sonnets
and an occasional psalm. In the complete edition of
Milton’s works, the best edition, published by Picker-
ing, in 1851, the poems are all contained in two vol-
umes, while the prose works fill six volumes. Let us
see how so many works came to be written in prose.

In 1638, still pursuing his studies toward the writ-
ing of a great poem, Milton started for a journey on

56 JOHN MILTON

the Continent. He was now in his thirtieth year, and
apparently had never earned a penny. By the few
people of discernment he was already recognized as
one of the foremost scholars in Europe and a poet of
the rarest sort. His broad-minded father approved
his plans, and cheerfully incurred the expense of this
journey, which might last several years, at an average
yearly cost of what in modern money might be called
$1000. Milton’s fifteen months upon the Continent
were chiefly spent in Italy, where he was everywhere
received with distinguished respect and courtesy. The
incident which made the deepest impression upon him
was a visit to the aged and blind Galileo at his villa
near Florence. In “ Paradise Lost” there are two
allusions to the great astronomer, one in Book V.
262 :-——
‘“‘ As when by night the glass

Of Galileo . . . observes
Imagined lands and regions in the moon ;”

the other in Book I. 287: —

“ Like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdorno, to descry new lands,
Rivers and mountains in her spotty globe.”

While in Italy, Milton wrote several charming sonnets.
in Italian, all addressed to a lady, perhaps one and the
same lady, the object of some passing fancy. At
Naples he was entertained by the Marquis Manso, who
had formerly given shelter to the poet Tasso, and
talked much to Milton about him. There he received
news from England which led him to abandon his in-

ee

JOHN MILTON 57

tention of visiting Greece, and turn homeward. The
day of reckoning, which he had foretold in “ Lycidas,”
was at hand. Civil war was coming, and he felt that
his country needed him. The date of his return home
is fixed by that of his halt at Geneva. An Italian
nobleman, driven from home for heresy, was living in
the Swiss city, and the ladies of his family kept an
album of autographs, in which, on June 10, 1639, Mil-
ton wrote his name with the sentiment from “ Comus ”:

“Tf Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.”

In recent times this album came into the possession
of Charles Sumner, and it may now be seen at Har-
vard College Library. It contains also the autograph
of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford.

The mention of this name brings us to the work
which began to absorb Milton’s time and strength
soon after his return to England. We have not time
enough for many details of it, nor is it worth our while
to follow the poet in his various changes of domicile.
The days in the earthly paradise of Horton were over,
and he was to dwell henceforth in London, and fight
for his ideal of liberty and good government. Soon
after the opening of the Long Parliament, his inter-
est in Church reforms led him to begin writing those
remarkable political pamphlets in which he did such
valiant service to the Puritan party. In the first
series of such pamphlets, published in 1641, he at-
tacked what he called “ Prelacy,” or the undue author-
ity of priests and bishops. Opposed to the tyrannical
policy of Archbishop Laud were two parties, one of
moderate reformers, the other of Root-and-Branch

58 JOHN MILTON

men, as they were called, men who would have trans-
formed the Episcopal Church into a Presbyterian.
Many of these soon passed on farther, and became
Congregationalists or Independents. It was not doc-
trinal questions that divided parties, it was not an
affair of theology, but of ecclesiastical politics; repub-
licanism was opposed to monarchy, alike in Church -
and in State; Milton was from the first moment a
Root-and-Branch man, his views were set forth with
keen logic, invincible learning, and impassioned elo-
quence; his pamphlets were read far and wide; he
became a marked man, and the object of savage
attacks.

Curiously enough, the next series of Milton’s pam-
phlets related to the subject of divorce, and were sug-
gested by domestic difficulties of his own. A few
miles from Oxford there lived one Richard Powell, a
gentleman of good family and one of the county mag-
istrates, a High Churchman withal and a stanch
Cavalier. He had a large family of children and kept
open house, and thither the Puritan poet turned his
steps in May, 1643. Whether he went to talk about a
debt of £500, which Mr. Powell had owed his father
for sixteen years, or what other reason might have
drawn him to that nest of royalists, does not appear.
But when he returned to London in June, strange to
tell, it was with one of the daughters, Mary Powell, as
his bride. She was only seventeen, and as light-
headed as Dora Copperfield. There was a brief frolic
of cousins and bridesmaids, and then, when all had
gone and the young girl was left alone in the society
of this mighty thinker and scholar, more than twice
her age, the sombre colour of such life soon came to

JOHN MILTON 59

be more than she could endure, and in August she
begged leave to go back to mamma and stay till the
end of September. The leave was kindly granted, but
when the time came she did not return. Milton sent
letter after letter, but there was no answer. After
some weeks he sent a messenger, who was dismissed
with rude words.

Practically this might be interpreted as desertion,
and in many places to-day would be judged fit: ground
for divorce. It was not so in England in Milton’s
time, and it led him to publish pamphlets advocating
more freedom of divorce than then existed. He made
no mention of his own trouble, but to us who read the
knowledge of it lights up what he says. Probably he
would have made efforts to obtain a divorce, but the
lapse of two years wrought a change. In June, 1645,
the battle of Naseby overthrew the king’s party, and
among other consequences the home of the Powells
was seized and the family turned out of doors. Milton,
too, became all at once a man of power, whose favour
was worth seeking. Some friends conspired together
and hid poor little Mary in a house in London, whither
Milton was known to be coming at a certain hour.
At the sound of his voice in the next room she rushed
in upon him, threw herself at his feet, and begged to
be forgiven. It was all her mother’s fault, she said.
The poet’s great heart asked for no explanation; it
was enough for her to come back now, the past need
never be mentioned. To crown his generosity he
even took that froward mother-in-law into his house,
and thenceforth had pretty much the whole Powell
family on his hands for some years. In 1652 Mary
Milton died, leaving three daughters, who all lived to

60 JOHN MILTON

grow up. From his return to England until 1646
Milton had earned money by teaching private pupils;
in 1646 the death of his father, whom he tenderly loved,
left him a comfortable fortune.

In 1649, after the execution of the king, Milton ac-
cepted the post of Latin Secretary to the government
of the Commonwealth, and in that position he remained
until after the death of Cromwell. His duties were
chiefly translating despatches and writing Latin letters,
but he was incidentally called upon for much more
than this. A royalist book appeared, entitled “ Eikon
Basilike,” or the “ Royal Image”; it purported to have
been written by the late king, and its object was to
stimulate the sentiment which had been shocked by
his execution. In its pages Charles I. appears as a
saint and martyr, and some of its tearful readers blas-
phemously likened him to Jesus Christ. The book
went through forty-seven editions. It was written
by a Dr. Gauden, whom Charles II. afterward re-
warded with a bishopric; but everybody, save the half-
dozen who knew the secret, believed it to be the work
of Charles I. So thought Milton himself when he
demolished it in his pamphlet entitled “ Eikonoklastes,”
or the “ Image Breaker,” the tone of which may be in-
ferred from a motto on the title-page, “ As a roaring
lion and a ranging bear, so is a wicked ruler over the
poor people” (Prov. xxviii. 15).

Dr. Gauden’s book, being in English, could not
reach many readers on the Continent, and young
Charles, who was then living in Holland, intrusted
the defence of his father to the celebrated Salmasius,
professor at Leyden, generally regarded as the best
Latinist in Europe. The book of Salmasius, called

JOHN MILTON 61

a “Defence of the King,” was answered by Milton’s
Latin treatise, called a “ Defence of the English Peo-
ple,’ which was probably read by every educated man
and woman in every corner of Europe. It was a de-
fence of the people for executing their king for treason.
The question is one on which conflicting views are
still maintained; but the number of those who would
hold the king guiltless and call him a martyr has
greatly diminished and is still diminishing, since we
know that he was capable of allying himself with any
party whatever for the sake of his personal ends. In
these days we find no difficulty in realizing that a king
who uses military force to overthrow the constitutional
liberties of the people is guilty of treason and amenable
to its consequences. The chief criticism now brought
against the execution of Charles I. is that it instantly
gave his son a claim to the throne and thus created
further disturbance. Cromwell and his party were
not ignorant of this danger, but they had to choose
between it and the other danger of making further
compacts with a king upon whose plighted word no
man could fora moment rely. They believed that the
latter danger was the greater, and they slew the king,
not in vindictiveness, but as a measure of public safety.
In Milton’s book, however, we catch yet another note,
a stern and grim one: let it be a warning to tyrants
all over the world. One can fancy the shiver with
which royalists everywhere must have read such star-
tling doctrines.

Milton’s love and admiration for the mighty Oliver
were never shaken. The two men were much alike
for downright honesty and unsullied patriotism, also
for breadth of mind and disdain of petty considera-

62 JOHN MILTON

tions. Their ideas of toleration and absolute freedom
were immeasurably above the level of contemporary
Puritan opinion. The greatest of Milton’s prose
works is his “ Areopagitica,” a defence of freedom of
speech and of the press. It is one of the immortal
glories of English literature.

In leaving with this scanty mention the subject of
Milton’s prose writings, a word must be said of his
style. It is the prose of a poet, impassioned and
gorgeous, often stiff and heavy with ornament, like
cloth of gold. In his time the virtue of conciseness
had not been learned. Milton’s sentences are apt to
be so long and cumbrous as to tax the attention. The
command of words is well-nigh unequalled. Urbanity
is often conspicuously absent. It was a great crisis of
humanity in which the combatants paid small heed to
politeness. Epithets were hurled at Milton like
showers of barbed arrows, and his retorts were quick
and deadly. Stateliness never deserted him, but, as
with George Washington, the white heat of his wrath
was such as to make strong men tremble. Pattison
somewhere says that in his passionate eloquence the .
English and Latin sentences creak like the timbers of
a ship in a storm.

At that time Milton wrote no poetry save now and
then some grand sonnets, among which those of Vane
and Cromwell, and on the Massacre of Piedmont, are
among the finest. The year 1658, his fiftieth year,
was a sad one in the poet’s life. His second wife, to
whom he had been married little more than a year,
suddenly died. Soon afterward died Cromwell, and
with him Milton’s dreams for the immediate future of
England. For a long time Milton’s sight had been

JOHN MILTON 63

defective. Blindness had come on in his forty-fourth
year, and it was now confessed to be incurable. The
appearance of his eyes had not changed, but all sight
was gone. He was then beginning to work steadily
upon “ Paradise Lost.”

In two years more came Charles II., and then the
headsman’s axe was busy. Milton had to hide for his
life, but was arrested and kept for several weeks in
prison. While there, he could hear the dismal story
of friends and companions beheaded and quartered.
In that cruel time how did the man escape who had
been the mouthpiece of the rebel government? When
even the lifeless body of Cromwell was taken from the
grave and hung on the gallows at Tyburn, what mercy
could be hoped for the man who defended the regicides
before all Europe? Professor Masson tells in detail
how skilfully the affair was managed, when the least
slip would have sent Milton to the scaffold. My own
ympression is that Clarendon, himself a scholar and
historian, could not quite bear to see England’s great-
est scholar put toa shocking death. But if Milton had
not been blind and helpless, I doubt if anything would
have saved him from the fate of Sir Henry Vane.

After his release Milton lived the remaining fourteen
years of his life in London. His third wife, to whom
he was married in 1663, survived him for many years.
Their life seems to have been happy. The blind man
needed constant help in his literary work. Sometimes
young men would gladly come and serve as readers
and scribes for the sake of his society and talk; some-
times his grown-up daughters were pressed into the
work. The eldest went scot-free because she stam-
mered; but Mary and Dorothy were taught the Greek

64 JOHN MILTON

and Hebrew letters, and had to read aloud by the hour
from books of which they understood not a word.
Dorothy always spoke of him with warm affection, but
Mary was once heard to wish he was dead.

The Puritan poet felt that he had fallen on evil days.
He could not see, as we do, that the good in Cromwell’s
work was really permanent, and that the impulse given
by Puritanism was never to die. In the vile reign of
Charles II., it must have seemed as if all virtue were
dethroned and the sons of Belial let loose upon the
earth. There is a tone of sadness, though not of
sourness, about Milton’s last years. He was never
sullen or fretful. Macaulay is right in speaking of his
“majestic patience.” But I do not see what Macaulay
could have been thinking of when he wrote of Milton
as “retiring to his hovel to die.” He had lost heavily
by investing money in Commonwealth securities, which
the Stuart government naturally refused to redeem.
His condition thenceforth, says Masson, was not one
of poverty but of “frugal gentility.” The house in
which he lived for twelve years and in which he died
was by no means a hovel, and on the income from his
property, such as it was, he maintained his family. Part
of the furniture of the house was a good organ, and on
it the blind man would play by the hour together, while
the verses of “ Paradise Lost” were taking shape in his
mind. That great poem, with its successors, “ Paradise
Regained” and “Samson Agonistes,” were written in
that house; and thither came visitors from all parts
of Europe, as toa sacred shrine. He who had so long
been known as scholar and charming poet lived long
enough to find men ranking him among the foremost
poets of all time. His latter days were molested by

as ———-_--~—

JOHN MILTON 65

gout, which at length proved fatal. On a Sunday
night in November, 1674, he passed away so quietly
that his friends in the room did not know when he
died.

“ Paradise Lost,” like Dante’s great poem, the only
one with which it can be compared, was the outcome
of many years of meditation. Asa young man Milton
thought of writing an epic poem, and he took much
time in selecting a subject. For a while the legends
of King Arthur attracted him, as they have fascinated
Tennyson and so many other poets. In the course
of his studies of early British history and legend, he
was led to write a “ History of England,” to the year
1066, in one volume. Aftera while he abandoned this
idea. The subject of an epic poem must be one of
wide interest. Homer and Virgil dealt with the
legendary beginnings of national history. Ifa national
subject, like the Arthur legends, were not adopted,
something of equal or wider interest must be pre-
ferred; and the choice of the Puritan poet naturally
fell upon the story of the “ Creation and Fall of Man.”
The range of such a subject was limited only by that
of the poet’s own vast stores of knowledge. No theme
could be loftier, none could afford greater scope for
gorgeous description, none could sound the depths of
human experience more deeply, none could appeal more
directly to the common intelligence of all readers in
Christendom. Of all these advantages Milton made
the most, and “ Paradise Lost” has been the epic of
the Christian world, the household book in many a
family and many a land where Puritanism has not
otherwise been honoured. As Huxley once remarked,
the popular theory of creation, which Lyell and Darwin

2F

66 JOHN MILTON

overthrew, was founded more upon “ Paradise Lost”
than upon the Bible.

There is a tradition that Milton preferred his
“ Paradise Regained” to “ Paradise Lost.” The
poem is much less generally read. Its main theme
is the temptation of Christ in the wilderness, and it
affords no such scope for picturesqueness as its prede-
cessor. Its greatness consists in the sustained loftiness
of the thought and the organ-like music of the verse.
There is a Greek severity and simplicity about it, as
also in the drama of the blind Samson, the last mighty
work of the Puritan poet.

A treatise of Milton’s on Christian doctrine, which
did not get published till 1825, confirmed the suspicion
which some shrewd readers of “ Paradise Lost” had
entertained, that the poet’s own theology, like that of
Locke and Newton, was Unitarian. In this, as in
some other ways, he was far from being in touch with
the Puritans of his time.

In the spiritual life of modern times there have
been two great uplifting tendencies, one derived from
the Bible, the other from the study of Greek. The
former tendency produced the Protestant Reformation,
the latter produced what we call the Renaissance or
New Birth of art and science. The spirit of the
Reformation animated the Puritans as a class. But
Milton was as much a child of the Renaissance as of
the Reformation; there was in him as much of the
Greek as of the Hebrew. The limits of Puritanism
were too narrow for him.

By common consent of educated mankind three
poets — Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare — stand
above all others. For the fourth place there are com-

JOHN MILTON 67

petitors: two Greeks, Aischylus and Sophocles; two
Romans, Lucretius and Virgil; one German, Goethe.
In this high company belongs John Milton, and there
are many who would rank him first after the un-
equalled three.

“SF ei ri ee
é te ey a
‘ane eae
‘ches balay
* 5.

III

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

III
THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

To any one looking superficially at a map of North
America in the year 1755, it might well have seemed
that, of the three great nations which had competed
for the possession of the continent, the foremost posi-
tion had been firmly secured by France. Certainly in
geographical extent the French domain held the first
place. From the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes,
and northward to Hudson Bay, stretched the French
province of Canada. From Lake Champlain slanting
through central New York to where Pittsburg now
stands, then following the Alleghanies down to east-
ern Tennessee, and slanting again in a somewhat arbi-
trary line to Mobile Bay, ran the eastern boundary of
French Louisiana. The western limits of this huge
province were ill defined, but they extended in theory
to the sources of the Missouri; and in a north and
south line Louisiana comprehended everything from
Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico. Nor was the
control of France over this territory merely nominal,
at least so far as the portion east of the Mississippi is
concerned. Though the settlements of the French
were but few and far between, they were placed with
admirable skill, both for commercial and for strategic
purposes. Each settlement, besides forming the nucleus
of a lucrative trade, was a strong military centre from
which the allegiance of surrounding Indian tribes might

71

72 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

be enforced, and at that time the power of the Indians
had not yet ceased to be formidable.

In contrast with this immense domain, the strip of
English settlements along the Atlantic coast would
have seemed quite narrow and insignificant. In New
York the frontier was at Johnson Hall, not far from
Schenectady; in Pennsylvania it was at Carlisle;
farther south the advance from the coast toward the
interior had been even less considerable. Moreover,
as far as military purposes were concerned, these colo-
nies would seem to have been as badly organized as
possible. Divided into thirteen distinct and indepen-
dent governments, owning a varying and ill-defined
allegiance to the British crown, it was next to impos-
sible to secure concerted military action among them.
Even in any single colony the raising of troops re-
quired so much discussion in the legislature, and so
much wrangling over local or sectarian interests, that
the assailant was as likely as not to have delivered his
blow and got off scot-free before any force was in
readiness to thwart or punish him. Besides this, the
English colonists were preéminently a peace-loving peo-
ple, occupied almost entirely with their own domestic
affairs; they had as little as possible to do with the
Indians, and for the present, at least, had no far-reach-
ing designs upon the interior of the continent: whereas
the French, on the other hand, had a perfectly well-
defined military policy, and bent all their energies
toward maintaining and consolidating the supremacy
over the country which they seemed already to have
acquired.

Nevertheless, within eight years from the time we
have taken for our survey, the French did not possess

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 73

a single rood of land in the whole of North America;
and except for a few months at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, they have never since held any
territory here. Moreover, the fall of the French
power was at once admitted to be as irretrievable as
it was sudden; and since the first fatal catastrophe it
has never shown even so much vitality as would have
been implied in a serious attempt to recover its lost
prestige. The causes of this striking phenomenon are
worthy of consideration.

It has often been observed that of all the modern
nations which have sought to reproduce and perpet-
uate their social and political institutions by coloniz-
ing the savage regions of the earth, England is the
only one which has achieved signal and lasting suc-
cess. For this remarkable fact various causes may be
assigned ; but I think we shall find the principal cause
to lie in the circumstance that in England alone,
among the great European nations, both individual
liberty and local self-government have always been
preserved; whereas elsewhere—and notably in the
France of the Old Régime, with which our compari-
son is here chiefly concerned — these indispensable
elements of national vitality had been, by the seven-
teenth century, almost completely lost. To under-
stand this point fully, we must go back far into the
past, and inquire for a moment into the origin of
despotic government.

The great problem of civilization is how to secure
sufficient uniformity of belief and action among men
without going so far as to destroy variety of belief and
action. A world peopled with savages and barba-
rians like ancient North America is incapable of much

74 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

progress, because it is impossible to secure concerted
action on a large scale, and so the powers of men are
frittered away in labours which tend toward no com-
mon result. The initial difficulty in civilizing a sav-
age world is to get a large number of its savages to
work together, for generation after generation, in ac-
cordance with some general system, for the subjuga-
tion of surrounding savages and the establishment of
a permanent community. Unless some such long-
enduring concert of action can be secured, a settled
form of civilization cannot be attained; but the his- -
tory of such a country—as in the case of ancient
North America — will be an endless series of trivial
and useless wars. The nations which in early times
have become civilized and peaceful have become so
through the military superiority which the power of
permanently concerted action entails; but this great
advantage has generally been attended by a disadvan-
tage. In most of these early civilized nations the
forces which tend to make the whole community
think and act alike have been so far encouraged that
the result has been absolute despotism. Not political
and ecclesiastical despotism simply, but underlying
these a social despotism which in course of time
moulds all the members of the community upon the
same model, so that their characters become monoto-
nously alike. The chief types of this kind of civiliza-
tion are China and ancient Egypt, but all the civilized
nations of Asia have been characterized by this sort
of despotism. The result, of course, is immobility.
When the whole community has come to think and
feel and behave in the same way, every expression of
dissent, every attempt at innovation, is at once crushed

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 75

out; or, rather, such uniformity of belief and behaviour
is attained only after all dissent and innovation have
been crushed out; and of course in such a community
no further progress is possible.

If our principal subject were the philosophy of
European history, it would be interesting and profit-
able to inquire into the circumstances which have
enabled the nations of Europe to get over the initial
difficulty of civilization and secure the benefits of con-
certed action without going so far as to crush out
variation in belief and conduct. As it is, we must
content ourselves with observing that in this sort of
compromise has consisted the peculiar progressiveness
of European civilization. The different nations of
Europe have solved the problem with very different
degrees of success, — England and Spain affording the
two extreme instances, — but none have quite failed in
it like the nations of Asia. There have been despot-
isms in Europe, but nothing like the despotism of
Assyria or Persia. The papacy never quite became a
caliphate, though some of the popes may have done
their best to make it so. Neither Philip II. nor
Louis XIV. was quite a sultan, however it might
have tickled their fancy to be thought so.

Nevertheless, the tendency toward Asiatic despotism
has asserted itself very strongly at various epochs of
European history, usually, perhaps, as the result of
prolonged military pressure from without. The ten-
dency increased quite steadily in the Roman Empire
from the time of the earliest Germanic invasions until
the culmination of the Byzantine era; and the tradi-
tions of this despotism were inherited by the Roman
Church. In Germany, the operation of the tendency

76 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

has been delayed in great part by the same causes
which have retarded the unification of the country.
In Spain, it had proceeded so far in the sixteenth cen-
tury as to produce a national torpor, from which the
Spaniards have not yet succeeded in arousing them-
selves. In France, a somewhat similar process went
on until, in the eighteenth century, it was checked by
the influx of English ideas, which prepared the way
for the great Revolution. In England, the tendency
toward absolutism was always much weaker than any-
where else, but it was strong enough in the seven-
teenth century to bring about the migration of
Puritans to America, and afterward the great Re-
bellion, and finally the Revolution of 1688. In these
and other instances, however, where it has asserted
itself in England, the tendency has been so weak as
to be promptly checked. There has never been a
time in English history when free thinking on politi-
cal and religious subjects has been quite suppressed.
Of all the great European nations, England alone has
succeeded in reaching a high stage of civilization with-
out seriously impairing the political freedom which
was once the common possession of the Aryan people
by whom Europe was last settled.

The consequences of this have been very great.
After the initial difficulties of civilization have once
been clearly surmounted, there can be no question that
diversity of opinion and variety of character are of the
greatest importance for the development of a rich and
powerful national life. Other things equal, the fore-
most place in civilization must inevitably be seized
and maintained by the nation which most sedulously
cherishes and encourages variety. Such a nation will

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 77

be more inventive than others, more prompt to meet
sudden emergencies, more buoyant in recovering from
calamity; its people will be more easily adaptable to
all sorts of climates and situations, more ready to
engage in all kinds of activity, more fertile in expedi-
ents, and more self-reliant in character. The nation,
on the other hand, which systematically seeks to
enforce uniformity of disposition among its members
—which kills out all nonconformists or drives them
beyond its borders —is sure, in proportion to its suc-
cess, to sink into an inferior position in the world.
The establishment of the Inquisition in Spain and
the expulsion of the Moriscoes were the two greatest
calamities which any nation ever voluntarily inflicted
upon itself. The evil wrought by the violent expul-
sion of the Moriscoes, involving as it did the sudden
downfall of several of the principal industries of the
country, is plain enough to every student of history.
But the deadly Inquisition, working quietly and
steadily year after year while fourteen generations
lived and died, unquestionably wrought still greater
evil. The Inquisition was simply a great machine for
winnowing out and destroying all such individuals as
surpassed the average of the nation in quickness of
wit and in strength of character, so far as to entertain
opinions of their own and to be bold enough to declare
those opinions. The machine worked with such ter-
rible efficiency that it was next to impossible for such
people to escape it. They were strangled and burned
by tens of thousands; and as the inevitable result,
the average character of the Spanish people has been
lowered. The brightest and boldest have been cut
off, while the dullest and weakest have been spared

78 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

to propagate the race; and accordingly the Spaniard
of the nineteenth century is, as compared with his
contemporaries, a less intelligent and less enterprising
person than the Spaniard of the sixteenth century.
In the march of progress this people has fallen be-
hind all the other peoples of Europe, and it is very
doubtful whether the damage thus done can ever be
repaired. For the competition among nations is so
constant and so keen, that when a people has once
clearly and unmistakably lost its hold upon the fore-
most position, it is not very likely to regain it. It is
so in the struggle for existence that goes on per-
petually between species of plants and brute animals.
It is equally so in the case of races of men, and his-
tory abounds with examples of it.

In similar wise, by his stupid persecution of the
Huguenots, Louis XIV. simply robbed France of a
rich and important element in its national life, and
what France thus irreparably lost was gained by the
Protestant countries of Europe and by the English
colonies in America. To Massachusetts, to New
York, and to South Carolina, the Huguenot settlers,
being picked men, added a strength out of all propor-
tion to their mere numbers, and to England and
Germany they did likewise. During the reign of
Louis XIV. more than a million Huguenots would
seem to have left France, including the three hundred
thousand who emigrated immediately after the revoca-
tion of the Edict of Nantes. The whole population
of France was then about fourteen millions, so that
here was a direct loss of seven per cent of the people
of the country. But mere figures can give no idea of
the extent of the damage, for the people who left the

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 79

kingdom were not thick-headed peasants. They were
mostly skilled and quick-witted artisans, — paper-
makers, workers in iron, weavers of linen and wool,
manufacturers of finest silks and laces. Among them
were eloquent preachers and learned writers, and some
of the most thoroughly trained soldiers and seamen
that France had ever possessed, insomuch that the
royal navy was for a time well-nigh paralyzed by their
departure. Wherever they went their nimble fingers,
quick eyes, and ready wits insured them cordial wel-
come. But even in this statement we do not realize
how greatly France has suffered by losing them. It
is a common opinion to-day among English-speaking
people that the French character is to some extent
wanting in earnestness and sincerity. Generalizations
of this sort about national characteristics are apt to be
untrustworthy, and one can hardly venture to say con-
fidently how far this opinion about the French people
may be true. No higher or nobler individual types of
sincerity and earnestness can anywhere be found than
some that France can show us, as, for instance, in the
statesman Malesherbes and the scholar Littré. And
among the common people it is by no means seldom
that one meets the earnest, simple-hearted, unselfish
goodness of the watchmaker Melchior Goulden in
Erckmann-Chatrian’s charming story of the Conscript.
To charge the French, as a people, with frivolousness
and insincerity is to do them gross injustice. Still,
at the bottom of the English prejudice there lies, no
doubt, a grain of truth. The Huguenot type of char-
acter, in its intense earnestness and. uncompromising
truthfulness, was like the Puritan type. What the
Puritan has been to England the Huguenot might

80 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

have been to France could he have stayed and thriven
there. Had the Puritans been driven from England,
we can readily see that the average character of the
English people, as regards sincerity and earnestness,
would have been inevitably lowered. And it is im-
possible that France should have lost out of its popu-
lation so large a portion as seven per cent, selected
precisely because of its signal preéminence in earnest-
ness and sincerity, without seriously affecting the
average character of the people for many generations
to come.

From these examples we may see that the dangers
arising from the expulsion of nonconformists are
many and profound. The evil consequences of such
a policy are innumerable, and they ramify in countless
directions. Such a policy had been intermittently
pursued in France ever since the Albigensian horrors
of the thirteenth century. But in the worst days of
English history no such policy has ever prevailed.
The acts against the Lollards, and the brief agony in
the reign of Mary Tudor, were weak and ineffectual.
The burning of heretics began in England in r4o1,
and ended in 1611. During those two hundred and
ten years the total number of persons put to death was
about four hundred. Of these executions about three
hundred occurred in the years 1555-1557, under Mary
Tudor, leaving a total of one hundred for the rest of
the two centuries. The contrast to what went on in
other countries is startling. No great body of people
has ever been violently expelled from England, so that
its peculiar type of character has been subtracted from
the subsequent life of the nation. On the contrary,
ever since the days of the Plantagenets it has been a

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 81

maxim of English law — often violated, no doubt, in
evil times, but still forever recognized as a guiding
principle — that whosoever among the hunted and
oppressed of other realms should set his foot on the
sacred soil of Britain became forthwith free, and en-
titled to all the protection that England’s strong arm
could afford. On that hospitable soil all types of
character, all varieties of temperament, all shades of
belief, have flourished side by side, and have interacted
upon one another until there has been evolved the
most plastic, the most energetic, the most self-reliant,
the most cosmopolitan race of men that has yet lived
on the earth.

These considerations begin to make it apparent why
a people like the English, encountering a people like
the French in some new part of the world, would natu-
rally overcome or supplant it. Another circumstance
implied in the same group of considerations will make
this still more apparent. I said just now that the
English alone have succeeded in working up to a
highly complex form of civilization without essentially
departing from the primitive Aryan principle of gov-
ernment. What we may call the “ town-meeting prin-
ciple,” with which we are so familiar as the logical
basis of our own American political institutions, was
essentially the principle on which the early Aryan
communities governed themselves. The great puzzle
of nation-making has always been how to secure con-
certed action on a grand scale without sacrificing this
principle of local self-government. The political fail-
ure of ancient Greece was the failure to secure con-
certed action on a sufficiently large scale. Rome
succeeded in securing concert of action, but in so

2G

82 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

doing sacrificed to a great extent the principle of local
self-government. The Roman government came to
be a close corporation, administering the affairs of the
empire through prefects and subprefects; and when
we say that the Teutonic invasions infused new life
into Roman Europe, I suppose what we chiefly mean
is that the Germans reintroduced to some extent the
“town-meeting principle,” and strengthened the sense
of local and personal independence. In England the
principle of local self-government became so deeply
rooted that it survived the overthrow of the feudal
system; but in France — the most thoroughly Roman-
ized country in Europe—it never acquired a very
firm foothold, and the overthrow of the feudal system
there resulted in government by a close corporation
and prefects, not altogether unlike that of the Roman
Empire.

Now, it is one characteristic of these highly central-
ized forms of government by prefects that they are not
easily transplanted. They are highly artificial forms
of government, in so far as they are the products of
very peculiar combinations of circumstances operating
for a long while in a particular country. When taken
away from the peculiar sets of circumstances in which
they have originated, and introduced into a new field,
they fall into decay, unless kept up by support from
without. There is no natural principle of life within
them. On the other hand, the town meeting, or the
assembly of heads of families, is, so to speak, the pri-
mordial cell out of which the tissue of political life has
been originally woven among all races and nations.
The civilized government which has learned how to
secure concerted action without forsaking this pri-

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 83

mordial principle contains an element of permanence
which is independent of peculiar local circumstances.
Whithersoever transplanted, it will take root and
flourish. It has all the reproductive vitality of cellular.
tissue, whereas the centralized bureaucracy is as rigid
and unplastic as cartilage or bone.

The force of these considerations is nowhere better
illustrated than in the contrasted fortunes of the French
and English settlements in North America. The
French colonies, as we have observed, were planted in
accordance with a far-reaching imperial policy, and
they were favoured by the especial solicitude of the
home government, which well understood their value,
and was bitterly chagrined when it became necessary
to part with them. Louis XIV. in particular, whose
long reign covered something like half of the brief his-
tory of New France, thought very highly of his Amer-
ican colonies, and laboured industriously to promote
their welfare. One of his pet schemes was to repro-
duce in the New World the political features of French
society in Europe, modifying them only so far as it
was necessary in order to secure in the New France a
bureaucratic despotism even more ideally complete
than that which had grown up in the old country. By
a reminiscence of vanquished feudalism the land was
parcelled out in seigniories, but the management of
affairs was in the hands of a viceroy, or governor-gen-
eral appointed by the king. The instructions of the
governor were prepared with extreme prolixity and
minuteness by the king and his ministers; and to in- °
sure his carrying them out in every particular another
officer was appointed, called the zz¢endant, whose prin-
cipal business was to keep an eye on the governor, and

84 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

tell tales about him to the minister of state at home.
Another part of the intendant’s duty was to travel
about the colony and pry into the affairs of every
household, in order that whatever was wrong might be
set right, and the wants of the people provided for.
We can imagine the wrath and the hooting which
such an official would have provoked in any English
colony that ever existed; but in Canada this sort of
thing was thought to be quite proper. No enterprise
of any sort was undertaken without an appeal to the
king for aid. Bounties were attached to all kinds of
trades, in order to encourage them, and at the same
time it was attempted to prescribe, as far as possible,
the exact percentage of profit which might be legally
earned. If people got out of work, they were to be
supplied with work at the cost of the government. In
order to foster a taste for ship-building, the king had
ships built at his own expense; yet at the same time
the ships which came over from France often went
home empty, save those which by royal edict were
allowed to carry furs or lumber. In order to encour-
age the raising of hemp, it was proposed that all hemp
grown within the colony should be purchased by the
king at a high price. To encourage agriculture in
general, the king sent over seeds of all sorts to be dis-
tributed among the farmers gratis, while the intendant
went about to see that the seeds were duly planted.
While native industry was thus sedulously fostered,
foreign trade was absolutely prohibited. No mild pro-
hibitory tariff, such as our modern protectionists
advocate, was resorted to, but foreign goods were
seized wherever found and solemnly burned in the
streets. The interests of landed property were also

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 85

looked after. As it is inconvenient that farms should
be too small, no one living in the open country was
to build a house on any piece of land less than a cer-
tain prescribed size, under penalty of seeing his house
torn down at the next visit of the intendant. That
the morals of these favoured farmers might remain
uncorrupted by the splendid vices of great cities, they
were forbidden to go to Quebec without permission
from the intendant, and any one in the city who should
let rooms to them was to be fined a hundred livres, for
the benefit of the hospitals. In 1710 the inhabitants
of Montreal were prohibited from owning more than
two horses or mares, and one foal apiece, on the
ground that if they raised too many horses they would
not raise enough cattle and sheep!

With a thousand such arbitrary and foolish, though
well-meant, regulations the people of Canada were
hampered and restricted, so that, in spite of the natural
advantages of the country for agriculture, for fisheries,
and for the fur trade, there was nothing surprising in
the facts that business of every kind languished and
that the population increased but slowly. The slow-
ness of increase of the population early attracted the
attention of the French government, which laboured
earnestly to counteract the evil. No inhabitant of
Canada was allowed to visit the English colonies or
to come home to France without express permission.
Emigrants for Canada were diligently enlisted in
France, and sent over in ship-loads every year, being
paid bounties for going. Women were sent over in
companies of two or three hundred at a time, all care-
fully sorted and selected as to social position, so that
nobles, officers, bourgeois, and peasants might each

86 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

find wives to suit them; and each of these prospective
brides brought with her a dowry paid by the benevo-
lent king. The arrival of these women was generally
preceded or accompanied by a royal order that all
bachelors in the colony must get married within two
weeks, under penalty of not being allowed to hunt, or
catch fish, or trade with the Indians. Every father of
a family who had unmarried sons over twenty years of
age, or unmarried daughters over sixteen, was subject
to a fine unless he could show good cause for his
delinquency. The father of ten children received
a pension of three hundred livres a year for the rest
of his life, while he who had twelve received four hun-
dred, and people in the upper ranks of society who
had fifteen children were rewarded with twelve hun-
dred livres. Yet, in spite of all these elaborate devices,
the white population of Canada, at the end of the reign
of Louis XIV., in 1715, and more than a century after
the founding of the colony, did not reach a total of
twenty-five thousand.

However absurd such a system of administration
may seem to us, it was, after all, only the unflinching
application of a theory of protective government which
has had very wide currency in the world, and has found
too many defenders even in our own self-governing
community. The contemporary administration of af-
fairs in France was characterized by many similar
errors, and was followed, indeed, in the course of
another century, by a terrible spasm of financial ruin
and social anarchy. Yet there is one important dif-
ference between the results of paternal government
administered by a centralized bureaucracy in the coun-
try where it has grown up and in the country to which

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 87

it is transplanted. In the native country of the bureau-
cracy a great many of the affairs of life are conducted
in accordance with usages established by immemorial
custom. Such usages have a certain presumption in
their favour, as adapted in some degree to the circum-
stances of the country; the bureaucracy must be to
some extent checked or guided by them, and its capac-
ity for mischief is so far limited. But when the same
system of government is transplanted to a new country,
its course of procedure is largely a matter of experi-
ment in pursuance of some general or a priori theory ;
and experiments of this sort have always failed. No
government that has ever yet existed has possessed
enough wisdom to found a prosperous society by any
amount of arbitrary administration. When, there-
fore, the forms and machinery of a centralized despot-
ism are sought to be reproduced away from their
connections with the peculiar local traditions amid
which they have grown up, it is but the dead -husk
that is transplanted instead of the living kernel.
While the French colonies in America thus throve
so feebly in spite of the anxious care of their sovereign,
the English colonies, neglected and left to themselves,
were full of sturdy life. The settlers had been accus-
tomed to manage their own affairs at home, instead of
having them managed by prefects and intendants. Had
their king attempted to deal with them as the benevo-
lent Louis XIV. dealt with his subjects, they would
have cut off his head or driven him into exile. In
America they conducted themselves very much as
they would have done in England, save that they were
much freer from interference. Having gone into vol-
untary exile themselves, they were relieved from the

88 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

necessity of beheading the king or driving him into
exile, and all they asked was to be let alone. To
sundry general commercial restrictions they submitted,
especially so long as these restrictions were not en-
forced, but in all important details each community
managed its own affairs according to its own ideas of
its own interests.

In ecclesiastical policy the difference between the
two peoples was as great as in their political and
social life. Religion and the Church occupy as promi-
nent a position in the history of Canada as in that of
New England. There are few more heroic chapters
in the annals of the Catholic Church than that which
recounts the labours and the martyrdom of the Jesuits
in North America. Already, before the death of
Champlain, the Jesuits had acquired full control of the
spiritual affairs of Canada. Their policy aimed at
nothing less than the consolidation of the aboriginal
tribes into a Christian state under the direct control of
the followers of Loyola; and upon this hopelessly
impracticable task they entered with an enthusiasm
worthy of the noblest of the old crusaders. The char-
acter of Maisonneuve claims a place in our affectionate
remembrance by the side of Tancred and Godfrey de
Bouillon. The charming chronicler Lejeune might
be mated with the Sieur de Joinville. Nor was St.
Louis himself inspired with a grander fervour than the
black-robed priests of the Huron mission. The in-
domitable Brébeuf, the delicate Lallemant, the long-
suffering Jogues, may be ranked with the ancient
martyrs of Christianity, and in their heroic lives and
deaths the system of Loyola appeared in its brightest
and purest light. Though thrown away upon the

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 89

Indians, the work of the Jesuits was, after all, the one
feature of Canadian polity which possessed sufficient
merit to survive the British conquest. Their policy,
nevertheless, involved the rigorous exclusion of all
freedom of thought from the limits of the colony. No
Huguenot was allowed to enter upon any terms. On
the other hand, if we consider the Puritans alone,
and recollect their treatment of the Quakers in Massa-
chusetts and the Catholics in Maryland, we shall
regard their conduct as hardly more politic or com-
mendable than that of the Jesuits. But, if we consider
the English colonies all together, the variety of opin-
ion on religious questions was very great; so great
that when they came to constitute themselves into a
united nation, the only common ground upon which
they could possibly meet in ecclesiastical matters was
one of unqualified toleration. The heretic in whose
face Canada coldly shut the door might be sure of a
welcome in one part of English America if not in
another.

With all these advantages in their favour, we need
not be surprised at the solid and rapid increase of the
English colonies. Yet the increase was surprising
when compared with anything the world had ever seen
before. We do not read that the king of England
ever set bounties on large families, or provided wives
for the settlers at his own expense. Yet by the year
1750— less than a century and a half from the settle-
ment of Jamestown—the white population of the
thirteen colonies had reached a million and a
quarter.

The contrast, therefore, with which we opened this
chapter was but a superficial one. Great as were the

gO THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

territorial acquisitions of the French, their actual
strength was by no means in proportion, and _ their
project of confining the English behind the Alleghanies
was as chimerical as would have been an attempt to
stop the flow of the St. Lawrence.

In carrying out their grand project the French relied
largely upon their alliances with the Indians, and for
this there was some show of reason. As a general
thing the French were far more successful than the
English in winning the favour of the savages. They
treated them with a firmness and tact very different
from the disdainful coldness of the English. They
humoured and cajoled them, even while inspiring them
with wholesome terror. The haughty and fiery Fron-
tenac, most punctilious of courtiers, with the bluest
blood of France flowing in his veins, at the age of
seventy did not think it beneath his dignity to smear
his cheeks with vermilion and caper madly about in
the war-dance, brandishing a tomahawk over his head
and yelling like a screech-owl or a cougar. Imagine
Governor Winthrop or Governor Endicott acting such
a part as this! On the other hand, if an Indian was
arrested for murdering a Frenchman, he was hanged
in a trice by martial law, and such summary justice
the Indians feared and respected. But when an Indian
was arrested for murdering an Englishman, he was put
upon his trial, with all the safeguards of the English
criminal law, and such conscientious clemency the
Indians despised as sentimental weakness. Captain
Ecuyer —a Frenchman in the English. service at the
time of Pontiac’s war — gave an excellent illustration
of the Frenchman’s native tact in dealing with his red
brother. Ecuyer was in command of Fort Pitt—whére

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE gI

Pittsburg now stands— and an attacking force of Dela-
wares summoned him to surrender, with sugared words,
assuring him that if he would retreat to Carlisle, they
would protect him from some bad Indians in the neigh-
bourhood who thirsted for his blood ; but if he stayed,
they would not be responsible for the consequences.
Ecuyer thanked them for their truly disinterested
advice, but assured them that he did not care a rush
for the bad Indians, and meant to remain where he
was; but, he added, “an army of six thousand pale-
faces is now on the way hither, and another of three
thousand has just gone up the lakes to annihilate
Pontiac, so you had better be off. I have told you
this in acknowledgment of your friendly counsels to
me; but don’t whisper it to those bad Indians, for
fear they should run away from our deadly ven-
geance!” This story of the English armies was, of
course, a lie of the first magnitude. The poor fellow
had but a handful of men wherewith to repel his swarm
of assailants, and he knew very well that any reénforce-
ment was rather to be longed for than expected. But
his adroit lie sent the savages away in a panic without
further provoking their wrath, and so was worth much
more than a successful battle.

Skilful as the French usually were in their dealings
with the savages, their position in the country was
nevertheless such that at an early period they were
brought into conflict with the most warlike of all the
Indian tribes, and this circumstance interfered materi-
ally with the success of the Canadian colony. In the
seventeenth century the country east of the Mississippi,
from the line of Tennessee and the Carolinas northward
to Hudson Bay, was occupied by two families or races

92 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

of Indians, differing radically from each other in their
speech, and slightly in their physical characteristics.
These were called by the French the Algonquin and
Iroquois families. Our old New England acquaintances
—the Pequods, Narragansetts, Mohegans, and Abe-
nakis — were all Algonquins. The Delawares, who
lived in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, were
also Algonquins. So were the Shawnees of the Ohio,
the Miamis of the Wabash, the Illinois, the Kickapoos
of southern Wisconsin, the Pottawatomies and Ojib-
was of Michigan, and the Ottawas of Michigan and
Upper Canada. Lower Canada and Acadia were also
inhabited by Algonquin tribes. In the central portion
of this vast country, surrounded on every side by
Algonquins, dwelt the Iroquois. The so-called Five
Nations occupied the central portion of New York;
to the south of them were the Andastes or Susque-
hannocks; the Eries lived on the southern shore of
the lake which bears their name; and the northern
shore was occupied by a tribe known as the Neutral
Nation. To the north of these came the Hurons,
One Iroquois tribe — the Tuscaroras — lay quite apart
from the rest, in North Carolina; but in 1715 this
tribe migrated to New York, and joined the famous
Iroquois league, which was henceforth known as the
Six Nations. The Indians south of the Tennessee
and Carolina line, such as the Creeks, Cherokees,
Seminoles, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, belong to a
third family — the Mobilian — distinct from the Algon-
quins and Iroquois. The Natchez of the Lower
Mississippi are supposed by some ethnologists to have
been an intruding branch of the Mexican Toltecs. Far
north, in Wisconsin, the well-known Winnebagos were

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 93

also intruders; they belonged to the Sioux or Dakota
stock, whose home was then, as now, west of the great
river.

Between the Algonquins and the Iroquois were
many important differences. They differed radically,
as already observed, in their speech. They differed
also in their modes of building their wigwams and
fortifying their villages. The mythology of the
Algonquins, moreover, was distinct from that of the
Iroquois. There were many degrees of barbarism
among the Algonquins, from the New England tribes,
which cultivated the soil, down to the Ojibwas, who
were very degraded and shiftless savages. But the
Iroquois were superior to any of the Algonquins.
They were somewhat finer in physical appearance,
and they were better fighters. They are said to have
had somewhat larger brains; they understood more
about agriculture; they were more capable of acting
in concert. They were very well aware of their
superiority, and looked down with ineffable contempt
upon the Algonquins, by whom they were in turn
regarded with an almost superstitious hatred and
fear.

Of all the Iroquois the most formidable in numbers,
the bravest in war, and the shrewdest in diplomacy
were the Five Nations of New York —the Mohawks,
Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The
favourite Iroquois name for this mighty league is
interesting. It was the custom of all the Iroquois
tribes to build their wigwams very long and narrow.
Sometimes an Iroquois house would be two hundred
and fifty feet in length by thirty in width, with a door
at each end. A narrow opening along the whole length

94 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

of the roof let in the light and let out some of the
smoke from the row of fires kindled on the ground
beneath. A rude scaffolding ran along each side
some three feet from the ground, and on this the
inmates slept while their firewood was piled under-
neath. In this way from twenty to thirty families
might be lodged in a single wigwam. By a very
picturesque metaphor the Iroquois of New York
called their great confederacy the Long House. The
Mohawks, at the Hudson River, kept the eastern door
of the Long House, and the Senecas, at the Genesee,
guarded the western door, while the central council fire
burned in the valley of Onondaga, and was flanked to
the right by the Oneidas, and to the left by the Cayugas.

The ferocity of these New York Indians was as
conspicuous as their courage, and their confederated
strength made them more than a match for all their
rivals —so that at the time of the first French and
English settlements they were rapidly becoming the
terror of the whole country. Turning their arms first
against their own kindred, in 1649 they overwhelmed
and nearly destroyed the tribe of Hurons, putting the
Jesuit missionaries to death with frightful tortures.
Next they exterminated the Neutral Nation. In 1655
they massacred most of the Eries, and incorporated the
rest among their own numbers; and in 1672, after a
terrible war of twenty years, they completed the ruin
of the Susquehannocks. At the same time they made
much easier work of their Algonquin enemies. They
drove the Ottawas from Canada into Michigan. They
allied themselves with the Miamis, and overthrew the
power of the Illinois in 1680, at the time when La
Salle was making his adventurous journeys. They

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 95

then turned upon the Miamis and defeated them, and
drove the Shawnees a long way down the Ohio. Some
time before this they had conquered the Delawares;
and this circumstance should be taken into account in
considering the remarkable success of Penn and his
followers in keeping clear of Indian troubles. A con-
ciliatory policy had no doubt something to do with
this; but it is not true that the Quakers were the only
settlers who paid for their lands instead of taking them
by force, for the Puritans of New England had done
so in every case except that of the Pequods. It is
worthy of consideration that, at the time when Penn-
sylvania was colonized, the Delawares had been
thoroughly humbled by the Iroquois, and forced into a
treaty by which they submitted to be called “women”
and to forego the use of arms. The price of the lands
sold to Penn was paid twice over — to the Delawares,
who actually occupied them, and again to the Iroquois,
who had obtained them by conquest. Thus the vic-
tors were kept in good humour, and the vanquished
Indians did not dare to molest the Quaker settle-
ments for fear of Iroquois vengeance.

But the Iroquois had a deeper reason for wishing to
keep on good terms with the English. As early as
the time of Champlain they had been brought into
deadly collision with the French, who certainly had
not yet learned the importance of their friendship, and
perhaps were not in a condition to secure it if they
had. Settling first among the Algonquin tribes of
the St. Lawrence, it was perhaps inevitable that the
French should court the friendship of these tribes by
defending them against their hereditary enemies. In
1609 Champlain attacked the Mohawks near Ticon-

96 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

deroga, and won an easy victory over savages who had
never before beheld a white man or heard the report
of a musket. From that time forth the Iroquois hated
the French, and after the destruction of the Huron
mission the French had good reason for reciprocating
the hatred. In 1664 the English supplanted the
Dutch in the control of the Hudson, and thus for the
first time came into formidable proximity to Canada;
and now began the rivalry between French and Eng-
lish which lasted for ninety-nine years. A sort of alli-
ance naturally grew up between the English and the
Five Nations, while, on the other hand, the French
sought to control the policy of all the Algonquin
tribes from the Penobscot to the Mississippi, and to
bring them into the field against the dreaded warriors
of the Long House. But there was a difference
between these two alliances. The English valued
the friendship of the Iroquois partly as a protection
against Canada, partly as a means of gaining access to
the lakes and obtaining a share in the fur trade; but,
in spite of all this, they took very little pains to con-
ciliate their dusky allies, and generally left them to
fight their own battles. On the other hand, the far-
sighted policy of the French made firm allies of the
Algonquin tribes and of the remnant of the Hurons,
and taken together they were more than a match for
the Iroquois. Yet for a long time the contest was by
no means an unequal one. The Five Nations held
their ground bravely, and at times seemed to be
getting the best of it. They inflicted immense dam-
age upon the Canadian settlements. From one end
of the Long House the Mohawks were perpetually
taking the war-path down Lake Champlain, while

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 97

from the other the Senecas interrupted the fur trade
on the western lakes, and the central tribes infested
the upper St. Lawrence. In the summer of 1689 they
penetrated as far as Montreal, and shouted defiance to
the garrison, while they laid waste the country for
miles around, and roasted and devoured their pris-
oners in full sight of the terror-stricken town. This
achievement, however, marked the acme of their suc-
cess and of their power. The next year they had to
reckon with a skilful and indomitable soldier in the
person of Count Frontenac, and the fates were no
longer propitious to them.

Frontenac had already been governor of New
France for ten years, from 1672 to 1682. Court
scandal said that he was a rival of Louis XIV. in the
affections of Madame De Montespan, and that the
jealous king had sent him over to America to get him
out of the way. He was an able administrator and a
man of large views. He even saw the desirableness
of introducing an element of local self-government
into the Canadian community, and strove to do so,
though unsuccessfully. He sympathized with La
Salle in his adventurous schemes, and aided them to
the extent of his ability. Had he been properly sup-
ported by the king, he might perhaps have carried out
the bold suggestion of Talon, and wrested from the
English their lately acquired province of New York,
thus isolating New England, and materially strength-
ening the grasp of France upon the American conti-
nent. But he unwisely made enemies of the Jesuits,
and his fiery temper and implacable stubbornness
got him into so many quarrels that, in 1682, he was
ordered home. Now, after seven years of neglect,

2H

98 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

he was reinstated by the king, and Canada welcomed
him back as the only man who could save the country.
No better man could have been chosen for the pur-
pose. Though seventy years of age, he still retained
something of the buoyancy of youth; in dauntless
courage and fertility of resource he was not unlike his
friend La Salle; and he was quite unrivalled in his
knowledge of the dark and crooked ways of the Indian
mind.

At Frontenac’s arrival the enmities of all the hostile
parties, both red and white, encamped upon American
soil, were all at once allowed free play. The tyrant
James II. had just been driven into exile at Versailles:
and Louis XIV., unwilling to give up the check upon
English policy which he had so long exercised through
his ascendency over the mean-spirited Stuarts, and
enraged beyond measure at the sudden accession of
power now acquired by his arch-enemy, William of
Orange — Louis XIV., who had but lately revoked
the Edict of Nantes, and committed himself to a
deadly struggle with all the liberal tendencies of the
age, now declared war against England. This, of
course, meant war in the New World as well as the
Old, and left the doughty Frontenac quite unhampered
in his plans for striking terror into the hearts of the
foes of Canada.

Frontenac’s first proceeding was to send scalping
parties against the English settlements, not merely to
annoy the English, but also to retrieve in the minds
of his Indian allies and enemies the somewhat shaken
military reputation of the French. In February, 1690,
a small party of Frenchmen and Algonquins from
Montreal, after a difficult march of three weeks

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 99

through the snow, surprised Schenectady at mid-
night, and slaughtered some sixty of the inhabitants.
In the following month a similar barbarous attack was
made upon Salmon Falls, in New Hampshire; and
shortly after, Fort Loyal, standing where now is the
foot of India Street, in the city of Portland, experi-
enced the same sort of treatment. This policy accom-
plished so much that it was tried again. In 1692,
York was laid in ashes, and one-third of the inhab-
itants massacred. In 1694, two hundred and thirty
Algonquins, led by one French officer and one Jesuit
priest, surprised the village at Oyster River — now
Durham, about twelve miles from Portsmouth — and
murdered one hundred and four persons, mostly women
and children. Some of the unhappy victims were burned
alive. Emboldened by this success, the barbarians next
attacked Groton, in Massachusetts, where they slew
forty people.

Similar incursions were made from year to year. A
raid on Haverhill in 1697 has become famous through
the bold exploit of a village Amazon. Hannah Dustin
had seven days before given birth to a child, and lay
in the farmhouse, waited on by her kindly neighbour,
Mary Neff. Her husband was at work in a field hard
by, having with him their seven children, of whom the
youngest was but two years old. All at once the war-
whoop sounded in Dustin’s ears, and snatching his
gun and leaping on his horse he galloped toward the
farmhouse, when he saw that the Indians were there
before him, so that his presence would be of no avail.
Turning quickly back to the field, he thought to seize
as many of the children as he could, and gallop away;
but when he looked upon the seven dear little faces

100 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

he knew not which to choose. So, picking up the
infant, he told the others all to run on before him
through the open fields, while he walked his horse and
kept firing Parthian shots at the Indians. Thus for
more than a mile they made their way to a fortified
house, while the prudent redskins, rather than follow
an armed and desperate man, chose the pleasanter task
of assailing defenceless women in their homes. The
_new-born babe they slung against a tree, dashing out
its brains, and Mrs. Dustin and Mary Neff they
dragged away into the forest, whither many of their
friends and neighbours had already been taken. The
savages, holding a council, proceeded to tomahawk
many of their prisoners, and the rest they divided
among one another as prizes to be taken home to
Canada and tortured to death. Mrs. Dustin and her
friend were assigned to a party consisting of two war-
riors, three squaws, and seven young Indians, and with
them there went an English boy from Worcester who
had been captured some time before and understood
the Algonquin language. These bloodthirsty savages
were devout Catholics, brought into the Christian fold
by Jesuit eloquence, and daily they counted over their
rosaries and mumbled their guttural paternosters. To
the natural delight which the Indian felt in roasting a
captive, they could add the keener zest which thrilled
the soul of the follower of Loyola in delivering up a
heretic unto Satan. But Mrs. Dustin had no mind to
yield herself to their horrid schemes. One night,
while the Indians were sound asleep by their camp-
fire in the depths of the New Hampshire forest, near
the upper waters of the Merrimac, the two women and
the boy rose silently and took each a tomahawk, and

~~

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE IOI

with swift and well-aimed blows crushed in the skulls
of ten of their sleeping enemies. One little boy they
spared; one wrinkled squaw awoke betimes and fled
screeching through the darkness. The ten dead sav-
ages Mrs. Dustin scalped, and getting into a bark
canoe the three doughty companions floated down
the Merrimac till they reached the village of Haver-
hill. The fame of their exploit went far and wide
throughout the land. A bounty of 450 was paid
them for the ten scalps, and the governor of distant
Maryland sent them a present in guerdon of their
prowess. The ghastly story has never been forgot-
ten, but is told to-day to all school children, though
school children are not always taught to associate
these incidents with Count Frontenac, or with the
expulsion of the Stuart kings from Great Britain.
Such barbarous warfare as this does not redound to
the credit of Frontenac, though personally he seems to
have been humane and generous according to the
standards of his age and country. The delightful
Jesuit historian, Charlevoix, recounts these massacres
of the heretical Puritans with emphatic approval. In
New England they awakened intense horror and in-
dignation. It was resolved to attack Canada. In
1690, after the massacres at Salmon Falls and Fort
Loyal, two thousand Massachusetts militia, under Sir
William Phips, actually sailed up the St. Lawrence
and laid siege to Quebec; while Winthrop, of Con-
necticut, started from Albany to create a diversion on
the side of Montreal. But these amateur generals
were no match for Frontenac, and both expeditions
returned home crestfallen with disastrous defeat.
Massachusetts, loaded with a debt of fifty thousand

102 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

pounds, was obliged for a time to issue paper money.
In the following year, Peter Schuyler, with a force of
New York militia and Mohawks, descended Lake
Champlain, and defeated the French in a fierce and
obstinate battle; but nothing came of the victory, and
the end of the campaign left Frontenac master of the
situation. |

Having thus successfully defied the English and
won a mighty reputation among his Algonquin allies,
the veteran governor was now prepared to chastise the
Iroquois. In 1693 a small French army under Courte-
manche overran the Mohawk country and destroyed
several towns, retreating after a drawn battle with Peter
Schuyler. In 1696 Frontenac himself, at the head of
two battalions of French regulars, eight hundred Cana-
dian militia, and a swarm of screeching Hurons and
Ottawas, crossed Lake Ontario, and battered down, so
to speak, the centre of the Long House. Carried in
triumph on the shoulders of the exulting Indians, the
old general, now in his seventy-seventh year, advanced
boldly into the sacred precincts of the Onondagas,
whither white men had never yet set foot save as
envoys on the most dangerous of missions, or as
prisoners to be burned at the stake. Most of the
Onondaga warriors fled in dismay, but their towns
were utterly destroyed, all their winter stores captured,
and their whole country laid waste. A similar pun-
ishment was then inflicted upon the Oneidas, and the
motley army returned to Canada, taking along with
them a great number of war chiefs as hostages. In
the following year the Iroquois, cowed by defeat and
famine, sent an embassy to: Quebec to see if they
could make a separate peace with the French, without

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 103

engaging to keep their hands off the Algonquins.
But Frontenac flung their wampum belt back into
their faces, and demanded unconditional submission,
under penalty of worse treatment than they had yet
experienced.

In February, 1698, the news of the peace of Rys-
wick ended the war, so far as the French and English
were concerned. In November of the same year
Frontenac died at Quebec, bitterly hated by his rivals
and enemies, dreaded and admired by the Indians,
idolized by the common people, and respected by all
for his probity and his soldierly virtues. His stormy
administration had been fruitful of benefits to Canada.
By humbling the Iroquois the French ascendency
over all the Indian tribes was greatly increased.
During the merciless campaigns of the past ten years
the Long House had lost more than half of its war-
riors, and was left in such a state of dilapidation and
dejection that Canada had but little to fear from it in
future. In 1715 the fighting strength of the confed-
eracy was partially repaired by the adoption of the
kindred tribe of the Tuscaroras, who had just been
expelled from North Carolina by the English settlers,
and migrated to New York. After this accession the
Iroquois, henceforth known as the Six Nations, formed a
power by no means to be despised. But their haughty
spirit was so far broken that they became accessible to
the arts of French diplomacy, and at times they were
almost persuaded to make common cause with the
other Indian tribes against the English. That they
did not finally forsake the English alliance was per-
haps chiefly due to the extraordinary ascendency
acquired over them by Sir William Johnson, an Irish-

104 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

man who came over to America in 1734, and settled
in the Mohawk Valley, building two strongholds there,
known as Johnson Castle and Johnson Hall. Ac-
quiring wealth by trade with the Indians of New York,
and political importance through his skill in manag-
ing them, Johnson was made a major-general in 1755,
and defeated the French at Lake George in that year,
and at Niagara in 1759. He was made a baronet for
his services, and died in 1774, as some say through
grief at the impending prospect of war between his
sovereign and his fellow-citizens.

Freed from the attacks of the Iroquois, Canada, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century, entered upon
a period of comparative prosperity, and during the
first half of the century she continued to be a thorn
in the side of New England. Before the final con-
flict began, France and England were at war from
1702 to 1713, and again from 1741 to 1748, a total of
eighteen years, and during most of these years the
New England frontier was exposed to savage inroads.
There was an atrocious massacre at Deerfield in 1704,
and another at Haverhill in 1708, and at all times there
was terror on the frontier. Even in time of peace the
Indians did not wholly cease from their incursions,
and there is little doubt that their turbulence was
secretly fomented by the Canadian government. In
1745 the indignant New Englanders tasted for a
moment the sweets of legitimate revenge. The
strongest and most important fortress of the French
in America, next to Quebec, was Louisburg, on Cape
Breton Island, which commanded the fisheries and the
approaches to the St. Lawrence. At the instance of
Governor Shirley, three thousand volunteers were

THE FALL:OF NEW FRANCE 105

raised by Massachusetts, three hundred by New
Hampshire, three hundred by Rhode Island, and five
hundred by Connecticut. The whole force was com-
manded by William Pepperell, a merchant of Maine.
With the assistance of four English ships of the line,
they laid siege to Louisburg on May-day, 1745, and
pressed the matter so vigorously that on the 17th of
June —just thirty years before the battle of Bunker
Hill—the French commander was browbeaten into
surrendering his almost impregnable fortress. The
gilded iron cross over the new entrance to Harvard
College Library is a trophy of this memorable exploit,
which not only astonished the world, but saved
New England from a contemplated French invasion.
Greatly to the chagrin of the American colonies, the
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle restored Louisburg to the
French, in exchange for Madras, in Hindustan, which
France had taken from England. The men of New
England felt that their services were held cheap, and
were much irritated at the preference accorded by the
British government to its general imperial interests at
the expense of its American colonies.

A great war had now become inevitable. By the
treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, Acadia had been ceded to
England, but neither this treaty nor that of Aix-la-
Chapelle, in 1748, defined the boundary between
Acadia and Maine, nor did either treaty do anything
toward settling the eastern limits of Louisiana. The
Penobscot Valley furnished one ever burning ques-
tion, and the New York frontier another. The dis-
pute over the Ohio Valley was the fiercest of all, and
from this quarter at last arose the conflagration which
swept away all the hopes of French colonial empire in

106 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

two hemispheres. In 1750, the Ohio Company, formed
for the purpose of colonizing the valley, had surveyed
the country as far as the present site of Louisville.
In 1753 the French, taking the alarm, crossed Lake
Erie and began to fortify themselves at Presque Isle
and at Venango on the Allegheny River. This
aroused the ire of Virginia, and George Washington
—a venturous and hardy youth of twenty-one, but
gifted with a sagacity beyond his years— was sent
by Governor Dinwiddie to Venango to order off the
trespassers. Washington got scanty comfort from
this mission; but the next spring both French and
English tried to forestall each other in fortifying the
all-important place where the Allegheny and Monon-
gahela rivers join to form the Ohio, the place where
the city of Pittsburg now stands. In the course of
these preliminary manceuvres, Washington fought his
first battle at Great Meadows,—though as yet war
had not been declared between France and England,
—and being attacked by an overwhelmingly superior
force, was obliged to surrender, with the whole of his
little army. So the French got possession of the much-
coveted situation, and erected there Fort Duquesne as
a menace to all future English intruders. In 1755 the
English accepted the challenge, and it was in attempt-
ing to reach Fort Duquesne that the unwary Brad-
dock was slain, and his army so wofully defeated by
swarms of Ottawas, Hurons, and Delawares, which the
Frenchmen’s forest diplomacy had skilfully gathered
together.

The defeat of Braddock is memorable on many
accounts, but chiefly for the way in which it inured
to the credit of the youthful Washington, while it dis-

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 107

pelled the glamour of invincibleness which had hitherto
hung about the trained soldiery of Britain. When
Braddock was appointed commander-in-chief of the
forces which were to ward off French aggression in
the Ohio Valley, he set about his task in high spirits.
He told Benjamin Franklin that Fort Duquesne could
hardly detain him more than three or four days, and
then he would be ready to march across country to
Niagara, and thence to Fort Frontenac. And when
the sagacious Franklin reminded him that the Indians
were adepts in the art of laying ambuscades, he scorn-
fully answered, “ The savages may be formidable to
your raw American militia; upon the king’s regulars
and disciplined troops it is impossible that they should
make any impression.” In this too confident mood
the expedition started. There were more than two
thousand men in all, — British regulars, and colonial
militia from Virginia and New York. Washington
was there as aid to General Braddock, and along with
him, arrayed under one banner, were Horatio Gates
and Thomas Gage. In every way Braddock made
light of his American allies, calling in question, not
only their bravery and skill, but even their common
honesty, and behaving in all respects as disagreeably
as he could. Their road was difficult in the extreme.
At its best it was a bridle-path no more than ten feet
wide, and desperately encumbered with underbrush
and fallen tree-trunks. Through the dense forest and
over the rugged mountains they thus made their way
in a straggling line nearly four miles long, exposed at
every moment to sudden overthrow by a flank attack ;
and so slow was their progress that it took them five
weeks to accomplish one hundred and thirty miles.

108 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

Wearied and impatient of such delay, Braddock at last
left his heavy guns and wagons, and pushed on with
twelve hundred picked men till he was within ten
miles of Fort Duquesne. Suddenly the dense woods
were ablaze on every side with the fire of rifles wielded
by an invisible foe. The ambuscade had been most
skilfully prepared by Charles de Langlade, a redoubt-
able coureur de bois. It was in vain that a few cannon
were tardily hauled upon the scene. The regulars
were overcome with panic and thrown into hopeless
disorder, while the merciless fire cut down scores
every minute. Out of eighty officers, sixty were soon
disabled. Braddock, after having five horses shot
under him, fell, mortally wounded. The Virginia
troops alone kept in order under the terrible fire, and
Washington, putting himself at their head, covered
the flight of the British remnant and saved it from
utter destruction. Of the twelve hundred picked men,
more than seven hundred were slain; all the artillery
and baggage wagons were lost; the frontiers of Vir-
ginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were uncovered, °
and the dreadful story of Indian massacre soon began
in the outlying villages. In this fierce woodland fight
the loss of the ambushed Frenchmen and Indians had
not exceeded sixty men. The fame of the British
overthrow went far and wide throughout North Amer-
ica. Its immediate consequences were soon repaired,
but the lesson which it taught was not soon forgotten.
As the unfortunate Braddock had himself invited the
comparison, men were not slow in contrasting the in-
efficiency of thee British officers and troops with the
stanchness of the Virginians and the skill of their
young commander. And in later years, when in town

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 109

meetings and at tavern firesides men discussed the
feasibleness of resisting George III., the incidents of
Braddock’s defeat did not fail to point a suggestive
moral.

The war thus inauspiciously begun was not confined
to American soil. After three-quarters of a century
of vague skirmishing, England was now prepared to
measure her strength with France in a decisive strug-
gle for colonial empire and for the lordship of the sea.
The whole world was convulsed with the struggle of
the Seven. Years’ War—a war more momentous in
its consequences than any that had ever yet been car-
ried on between rival European powers; a war made
illustrious by the genius of one of the greatest generals,
and of perhaps the very greatest war minister, the
world has ever seen. It was an evil hour for French
hopes of colonial empire when the invincible prowess
of Frederick the Great was allied with the far-sighted
policy of William Pitt. In the autumn of 1757, shortly
after the Great Commoner was intrusted with the
direction of the foreign affairs of England, the king
of Prussia annihilated the French army at Rossbach,
and thus — to say nothing of the immediate results —
prepared the way for Waterloo and Sedan, and for the
creation of a united and independent Germany. Yet,
in spite of this overwhelming victory, the united
strength of France and Austria and Russia would at
last have proved too much for the warlike king, had
not England thrown sword and purse into the scale
in his favour. By his firm and energetic support of
Prussia, Pitt kept the main strength of France busily
occupied in Europe, while English fleets attacked her
on the ocean, and English armies overran her posses-

110 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

sions in America, and wrested from her grasp the con-
trol of India, which she was also seeking to acquire.

At the time of Pitt’s accession to power, affairs were
not going on prosperously in America. The crush-
ing defeat of Braddock had, indeed, been followed by
the victory of Johnson over Dieskau at Lake George.
But this victory did more harm than good; for John-
son remained inactive after it, and Dieskau, having
been taken prisoner, was succeeded by the famous
Marquis of Montcalm, a general of great ability, who
resumed offensive operations with vigour and success.
In 1756 Montcalm destroyed Oswego; in 1757 he
captured Fort William Henry, which Johnson had
built to defend the northern approaches to the Hud-
son; and in 1758 he defeated the English with heavy
loss in the desperate battle of Ticonderoga.

This signal defeat of the English possesses some
interest as one among many illustrations of the diff-
culty of carrying by storm a strongly intrenched posi-
tion. In July, 1758, General Abercrombie, at the head
of fifteen thousand men, the largest army that had ever
been assembled in America, crossed Lake George, and
advanced upon the strong position which barred the
approach to Canada from the valley of the Hudson.
In a preliminary skirmish was slain Lord Howe, elder
brother of the admiral and the general of the War of
Independence, an able and gallant officer, who had so
endeared himself to the Americans that Massachusetts
afterward raised a monument to his memory in West-
minster Abbey. - The force with which Montcalm held
Ticonderoga numbered little more than three thousand,
and as it was thought that reénforcements were on their
way to him, Abercrombie decided to hazard a direct as-

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE Pry

sault. The result was a useless slaughter, like that which
the present generation has witnessed at Fredericks-
burg and Cold Harbor. After an obstinate struggle of
four hours, in which the gallant Englishmen dashed
themselves repeatedly against a stout breastwork nine
feet high, they lost heart and withdrew in disorder,
leaving two thousand men killed or wounded on the
field. For this disastrous error of judgment Aber-
crombie was superseded by General Amherst.

The victory of Ticonderoga was, however, the last
considerable success of the French arms in this war.
The stars in their courses had begun to fight against
them, and, with the exception of this brief gleam of
triumph, their career for the next two years was an
unbroken succession of disasters. In 1758 the French
fleets were totally defeated by Admiral Osborne off
Cartagena, and by Admiral Pococke in the Indian
Ocean, while their great squadron destined for North
America was driven ashore in the Bay of Biscay by
Sir Edward Hawke. In Germany, their army was
defeated by the Prince of Brunswick, at Crefeld, in
June.

In America prodigious exertions were made. Mas-
sachusetts raised 7000 men, and during the year con-
tributed more than a million dollars toward the
expenses of the war. Connecticut raised 5000 troops;
New Hampshire and Rhode Island furnished 1000 be-
tween them; New York raised 2680; New Jersey,
1000; Pennsylvania, 2700; Virginia, 2000, and South
Carolina, 1250. With these provincial troops, with
22,000 British regulars, and with an especial levy of
Highlanders from Scotland, there were in all 50,000
troops collected for the overthrow of the French power

Pi? THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

in America. With such vigorous preparations as
these, events proceeded rapidly. In July, General
Amherst captured Louisburg, and finally relieved New
England from its standing menace, besides securing
the mouth of the St. Lawrence. In August, General
Bradstreet, by the destruction of Fort Frontenac, broke
the communication between Canada and the French
settlements in the West. In November, General
Forbes, having built a road over the Alleghanies and
being assisted by Washington and Henry Bouquet,
succeeded in capturing Fort Duquesne, which then
became Fort Pitt, and now as Pittsburg still bears
the name of the great war minister.

The capture of this important post gave the English
the control of the Ohio Valley, and thus secured the
object for which the war had been originally under-
taken. Great were the rejoicings in Pennsylvania and
Virginia, and great was the honour accorded to Wash-
ington, to whose skill the capture of the “ gateway of
the West” had been chiefly due. But Pitt had now
made up his mind to drive the French from America
altogether, and what had been done was only the prel-
ude to heavier blows. Terrible was the catalogue of
French defeats. In 1759 their army in Germany was
routed at Minden by the Prince of Brunswick; one
great fleet was defeated at Lagos Bay by Admiral
Boscawen, and another was annihilated at Quiberon
by Sir Edward Hawke; Havre was bombarded by
Admiral Rodney; Guadeloupe, the most valuable of
the French West Indies, was taken; and serious re-
verses were experienced in India. In America, Niag-
ara was taken on the 24th of July, Ticonderoga on the
27th, and Crown Point on the 1st of August. And

Se Se _

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 113

the 13th of September witnessed the last great scene
in this eventful story.

Crestfallen with calamity, the people of Canada had
begun to cry for peace at any price; but Montcalm,
ensconced with seven thousand men in the impregna-
ble stronghold of Quebec, declared that, though the
outlook was anything but cheering, he had not lost
courage, but was resolved to find his grave under the
ruins of the colony. Quebec was the objective point
of the summer campaign, and early in June the youth-
ful General Wolfe had appeared in the St. Lawrence
with an army of eight thousand men, supported by a
powerful fleet of twenty-two ships of the line, with as
many frigates. In this memorable expedition Colonel
Barré, afterward the eloquent friend of the American
colonies in Parliament, was adjutant-general; a regi-
ment of light infantry was commanded by William
Howe; and one of the ships had for its captain the
immortal navigator, James Cook. It was intended
that Johnson, after taking Niagara, and Amherst, after
taking Ticonderoga and Crown Point, should unite
their forces with those of Wolfe, and overwhelm the
formidable Montcalm by sheer weight of numbers.
But Johnson failed for want of ships to transport his
men, and Amherst failed through dulness of mind, so
that Wolfe was left to do the work alone. The task
was well-nigh impossible, though the powerful English
fleet had full control of the river. Standing on a lofty
rock just above the junction of the St. Charles and St.
Lawrence rivers, and guarded by water on three sides,
Quebec was open to a land attack only on the north-
west side, where the precipice was so steep as to be
deemed inaccessible. After wasting the summer in

21

114 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

abortive attacks and fruitless efforts to take the wary
Montcalm at a disadvantage, Wolfe suddenly made up
his mind to perform the impossible, and lead his army
up the dangerous precipice. A decided movement of
the fleet drew Montcalm’s attention far up the river,
while at one o’clock in the morning of the 13th of
September five thousand Englishmen in boats, without
touching an oar, glided steadily down-stream with the
current, and landed just under the steep bluff. Maple
and ash trees grew on the side, and pulling themselves
up by branches and bare gnarled roots from tree to
tree, with herculean toil the light infantry gained the
summit and overpowered the small picket stationed
there, while the heavy-armed troops made their way
up a rough winding path near by. By daybreak the
ascent was accomplished, and the English army stood
in solid array on the Heights of Abraham, with the
doomed city before them. When the news was
conveyed to Montcalm, in his camp the other side
of the St. Charles, he thought at first that it must be a
feint to draw him from his position; but when he had
so far recovered from his astonishment as to compre-
hend what had happened, he saw that his only hope
lay in crushing the intruders before noon, and without
a moment’s delay he broke camp and marched for the
enemy. At ten o'clock the two armies stood face to
face, equal in numbers, but very unequal in quality.
The five thousand Englishmen were all thoroughly
disciplined soldiers, while of Montcalm’s force but two
thousand were French regulars, the rest being unsteady
Canadian militia. France was kept altogether too
busy in Europe to be able to spare many trained sol-
diers to defend her tottering empire in America.

ee

a

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE II5

After an hour of weak cannonading the French
army charged upon the Englishmen, who stood as
firm as a stone wall and with a swift and steady
musket fire soon made the French recoil. As soon
as the French attack wavered, the English in turn
promptly charged, and the enemy were routed. In
this supreme moment the two heroic commanders
were borne from the field with mortal wounds, and
as life ebbed quickly away each said his brief and
touching word which history will never forget.
“Now, God be praised, I will die in peace,” said
Wolfe; “ Thank God, I shall not live to see Quebec
surrendered,” said the faithful Frenchman. These
noble deaths, and the wild hardihood of the feat that
had just been accomplished, mark well the battle which
completed the ruin of the colonial empire of Catholic
and despotic France. There have been many greater
generals than Wolfe, as there have been many greater
battles than the battle of Quebec. But just as the
adventurous boldness of that morning’s exploit stands
unsurpassed in history, so in its far-reaching historic
significance the victory of Wolfe stands foremost among
modern events. As the boats were gliding quietly down
the river in the darkness, while the great events of the
next ten hours were still in the unknown future, the
young general repeated to his friends standing about
him the exquisite verses of Gray’s “ Elegy written in a
Country Churchyard,” which had been published only
ten years before, and declared that he would rather
have written that poem than take Quebec. Could he
have foreseen all that his victory would mean to future
ages, and what a landmark it would forever remain in
the history of mankind, he might perhaps have modi-

116 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

fied this generous judgment. The battle of Quebec
did not make the supremacy of the English race in the
world; but as marking the moment at which that
supremacy first became clearly manifest, it deserves
even more than the meed of fame which history has
assigned to it.

During the progress of this eventful war, the tribes
of the Long House, under the influence of Sir William
Johnson, had either remained neutral, or had occasion-
ally assisted the English cause. The Algonquin tribes,
however, from east to west — including even the Dela-
wares, who, since the decline of the Iroquois power, no
longer consented to call themselves women — made
common cause with the French, and in many cases
proved very formidable allies. The overthrow of the
French power came as a terrible shock to these Indians,
who now found themselves quite unprotected from
English encroachment. At first they refused to
believe that the catastrophe was irretrievable, and one
great Indian conceived a plan for retrieving it.

Of all the Indians of whom we have any record,
there were few more remarkable for intellectual power
than Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas. He was as fierce
and treacherous as any of his race, but he was char-
acterized by an intellectual curiosity very rare among
barbarians, and he exhibited an amount of forethought
truly wonderful in an Indian. It seemed to him that
if all the tribes in the country could be brought
to unite in one grand attack upon the English, they
might perhaps succeed in overthrowing them. It was
a scheme like that which perhaps on insufficient grounds
has been ascribed to the Wampanoag Philip, but the
war set on foot by Pontiac was of far greater dimen-

a ae

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 1t7

sions than “ King Philip’s War,” though the suffering
and terror it inflicted were confined to what then
seemed a distant, frontier. The time had gone by
when the English colonies could suppose, even in a
momentary fit of wild despondency, that their exist-
ence was seriously threatened. The scene of Pontiac’s
war, compared with Philip’s, marks the progress of the
white men, and shows how far.the exposed frontier
had been thrown westward. After the conquest of
Canada the Indian disappears forever from the history
of New England, and except in the remote forests of
northern Maine hardly a vestige of his presence has
been left there. The tribes which Pontiac aroused to
bloodshed were the Algonquin tribes of the Upper
Lakes, and of the Mississippi and Ohio valleys, with
some of the Mobilians and the remnant of the Hurons;
and out of the Iroquois league his crafty eloquence pre-
vailed upon the most numerous tribe, the Senecas, who
were less completely under English influence than their
brethren east of the Genesee.

The peace of 1763 between France and England had
been signed but three short months when this new war
unexpectedly broke out. Two years of savage butchery
ensued, in the course of which nearly all the forest
garrisons in the West were overcome and massa-
cred, though the stronger places, such as Detroit
and Fort Pitt, succeeded with some difficulty in
holding out. The wild frontier of Pennsylvania
became the scene of atrocities which beggar de-
scription. Night after night the forest clearings
were made hideous with the glare of blazing log
cabins and the screams of murdered women and
children. The traveller through the depths of the

118 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

woods was frequently appalled by the sight of the
scorched and blackened corpses of men and women
tightly bound to tree-trunks, where their lives had
gone out amid diabolical torments. During the sum-
mer and autumn of 1763 more than two thousand per-
sons were murdered or carried into captivity, while the
more sheltered towns and villages to the eastward
were crowded with starving refugees who had escaped
the firebrand and the tomahawk.

One fiendish incident of that bad time especially
called forth the horror and rage of the people. A man,
passing by a little schoolhouse rudely built of logs
and standing on a lonely road, but many miles inside
the frontier, “was struck by the unwonted silence;
and, pushing open the door, he looked in. In the
centre lay the master, scalped and lifeless, with a
Bible clasped in his hand; while around the room
were strewn the bodies of his pupils, nine in number,
miserably mangled, though one of them still retained
a spark of life.” Maddened by such dreadful deeds,
and unable to obtain from the government at Phila-
delphia a force adequate for the protection of their
homes, the men of the frontier organized themselves
into armed bands, and soon began to make reprisals
that were both silly and cruel, inasmuch as they fell
upon the wrong persons. The principal headquarters
of these frontier companies was at Paxton, a small
town on the east bank of the Susquehanna; and their
first memorable exploit was the sack of Conestoga, a
village of friendly Indians of Iroquois lineage, who had
some time since undergone a transformation from scalp-
hunting savages into half-civilized vagabonds, and had
in no way molested the English settlers. This out-

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE 119

rage called forth a proclamation from the governor,
condemning the act and offering a reward for the ap-
prehension of the persons concerned in it, while the
survivors of the Conestoga massacre were hurried to
Lancaster, and lodged in the jail there to get them
out of harm’s way. The Paxton men, greatly incensed
at what they considered the hostile action of the
Quaker government, and determined not to be balked
of their prey, galloped into Lancaster, broke into the
jail, and murdered all the Indians who were sheltered
there. In the rural districts these deeds were gener-
ally excused as the acts of men goaded to desperation
by unutterable wrongs; but in the cultivated Quaker
society of Philadelphia they were regarded with horror,
and contentions arose which were embittered by theo-
logical prejudice, since the Paxton men were mostly
Presbyterians of Scotch-Irish ancestry, and boldly justi-
fied their conduct by texts from the Old Testament.
As the excitement increased, the Paxton men, to the
number of a thousand, marched on Philadelphia, with
intent to overawe the government and to wreak their
vengeance on an innocent party of Christian Indians
who were quartered on an island a little below the
city. There was great alarm in the city, but when the
rioters arrived at Germantown, they saw that to cap-
ture Philadelphia would far exceed their powers; and
they listened to the wise counsel of Franklin, who ad-
vised them to go home and guard the troubled frontier,
a task for which none were better fitted than they.
The danger of civil strife being thus averted, the flame
of controversy burned itself out ina harmless pamphlet
war, in which Quakers and Presbyterians heaped argu-
ment and ridicule upon each other to their heart’s

120 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

content. Meanwhile, at Bushy Run, in the Alleghanies,
Henry Bouquet won the fiercest battle ever fought
between white men and Indians; and in the course’
of the next year he made his way far into the Ohio
country, and completely humbled the Shawnees and
Delawares, so that they were fain to sue for peace.
This campaign wrought the ruin of the great Indian
conspiracy. The Senecas were browbeaten by John-
son, the French refused to lend any assistance, and
finally Pontiac, after giving in his submission, was
murdered in the woods at Cahokia, near St. Louis.
Useless butchery was all that ever came of his deep-
laid scheme, as it is all that has ever come of most
Indian schemes; but the “Conspiracy of Pontiac” is
worth remembering as a natural sequel of the great
French war, as the most serious attempt ever made by
the Indians to assert themselves against white men, and
as the theme of one of the most brilliant and fascinat-
ing books that has ever been written by any historian
since the days of Herodotus.

The Seven Years’ War did not come to an end
until Spain, afraid for her possessions in the East and
West Indies, had taken up arms on the side of France.
She thus invited the catastrophe which she dreaded,
for in 1762 England conquered Cuba and the Philip-
pine Islands. At the definitive treaty of peace, known
as the peace of Paris, and signed in February, 1763,
England gave back Cuba and the Philippine Islands
to Spain in exchange for Florida. To indemnify
Spain for this loss of Florida, incurred through her
alliance with France, the latter power ceded to Spain
the town of New Orleans and all of Louisiana west
of the Mississippi —a vast and ill-defined region, as

THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE I2I

thoroughly unknown at that day as Australia or Cen-
tral Africa. From 1763 until 1803 New Orleans and
St. Louis were accordingly governed by Spaniards.
In 1803 this vast region was ceded by Spain to Bona-
parte, who sold it to the United States for fifteen
million dollars. Florida, on the other hand, was re-
turned to Spain by England at the close of the Revo-
lutionary War, and was afterward, in 1819, bought
from Spain by the United States.

All of Louisiana east of the Mississippi except New
Orleans, and all of Canada, were at the peace of Paris
surrendered to England, so that not a rood of land in
all North America remained to France. France also
renounced all claim upon India, and it went without
saying that England, and not France, was now to be
mistress of the sea.

It may be said of the treaty of Paris that no other
treaty ever transferred such an immense portion of the
earth’s surface from one nation to another. But such
a statement, after all, gives no adequate idea of the
enormous results which the genius of English liberty
had for ages been preparing, and which had now
found definite expression in the policy of William Pitt.
The roth of February, 1763, might not unfitly be cele-
brated as the proudest day in the history of England.
For on that day it was made clear— had any one had
eyes to discern the future, and read between the lines
of this portentous treaty —that she was destined to
become the revered mother of many free and enlight-
ened nations, all speaking the matchless language
which the English Bible has forever consecrated, and
earnest in carrying out the sacred ideas for which
Latimer suffered and Hampden fought. It was pro-

122 THE FALL OF NEW FRANCE

claimed on that day that the institutions of the Roman
Empire, however useful in their time, were at last out-
grown and superseded, and that the guidance of the
world was henceforth to be, not in the hands of imperial
bureaus or papal conclaves, but in the hands of the
representatives of honest labour and the preachers of
righteousness, unhampered by ritual or dogma. The
independence of the United States was the first great
lesson which was drawn from this solemn proclama-
tion. Our own history is to-day the first extended
commentary which is gradually unfolding to men’s
minds the latent significance of the compact by which
the vanquished Old Régime of France renounced its
pretensions to guide the world. In days to come, the
lesson will be taken up and reiterated by other great
communities planted by England, in Africa, in Aus-
tralia, and the islands of the Pacific, until barbarous
sacerdotalism and despotic privilege shall have van-
ished from the face of the earth, and the principles of
Protestantism, rightly understood, and of English self-
government, shall have become forever the undisputed
possession of all mankind.

IV

CONNECTICUT'S INFLUENCE ON THE
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

IV

CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE ON THE
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION

ConnecTicuT’s influence on the first beginnings
and final establishment of our Federal government
has attracted little attention; and this is but one
among many instances of the fact that a really intel-
ligent and fruitful study of American history is only
an affair of yesterday.

It is surprising to think how little attention was
paid to the subject half a century ago. I believe that,
as schoolboys, we did learn something about some of
the battles in the War of Independence, and two or
three of the sea-fights of the years 1812-1815; but our
knowledge of earlier times was limited to dim notions
about Captain John Smith and the Pilgrim Fathers,
while now and then perhaps there flitted across our
minds the figures of Putnam and the wolf or a
witch or two swinging from the gallows in Salem
village, or the painted Indians rushing with wild
war-whoop into Schenectady. Small pains were taken
to teach us the significance of things that had hap-
pened at our very doors. I was myself a native of
Hartford, yet long after Plymouth Rock had come
to mean something to me, the names of Thomas
Hooker and Samuel Stone fell upon my ears as mere
empty sound.. Much as we were given to bragging,
in Fourth of July speeches, on our fine and mighty

125

126 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

qualities, we were modestly unconscious of the fact
that some of our early worthies were personages as
interesting and memorable as their brethren who
fought the Lord’s battles under Cromwell. In those
days when our great historian, Francis Parkman, pub-
lished his first work, the fascinating book which de-
scribed the conspiracy of Pontiac, the greater part of
the first edition lay for years untouched on the pub-
lishers’ shelves, and one of the author’s friends said to
him: “ Parkman, why don’t you take some European
subject, —something that people will be interested
in? Why don’t you write about the times of Michael
Angelo, or the Wars of the Roses, or the age of
Louis XIV.? Nobody cares to read about what hap-
pened out here in the woods a hundred years ago.”
Parkman’s reply was like Luther’s on a greater occa-
sion, “I do what I do because I cannot do other-
wise.” That was, of course, the answer of the inspired
man marked out by destiny for a needed work.

An incident which occurred in my own experience
more than twenty years ago has not yet lost for me its
ludicrous flavour. A gentleman in a small New
England town was asked if some lectures of mine on
“ America’s Place in History” would be likely to find
a good audience there. He reflected for a moment,
then shook his head gravely. “ The subject,” said he,
“is one which would interest very few people.” In the
state of mind thus indicated there is something so bewil-
dering that I believe I have not yet recovered from it.

During the past twenty years, however, the interest
in American history has been at once increasing and
growing enlightened. Every year finds a greater
number of people directing their attention to the

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION ¥27

subject, and directing it in a more intelligent way.
Twenty years ago the Johns Hopkins University set
the example of publishing a monthly series of pam-
phlets setting forth the results of special research upon
topics that had either escaped attention or been very
inadequately treated. One paper would discuss the
functions of constables in New England in the early
days ; another would inquire into the causes of the piracy
that infested our coasts at the end of the seventeenth
century; another would make the history of town and
county government in Illinois as absorbing as a novel;
another would treat of old Maryland manors, another
of the influence of Quakers upon antislavery senti-
ment in North Carolina, and so on. Many of the
writers of these papers, trained in the best methods of
historical study, have become professors of history in
our colleges from one end of the Union to the other,
and are sowing good seed where they go; while other
colleges have begun to follow the example thus set.
From Harvard and Columbia and the Universities of
Wisconsin and Nebraska come especially notable con-
tributions to our study each year. In Kentucky a
Filson Club investigates the early overflow of our pop-
ulation across the Alleghanies; in Milwaukee a Park-
man Club discusses questions raised by the books of
that great writer, while books long forgotten or never
before printed are now made generally accessible.
Thus the Putnams of New York are bringing out ably
edited sets of the writings of the men who founded
this republic. Thus Dr. Coues has clothed with fresh
life the journals and letters of the great explorers who
opened up our Pacific country; while a crowning
achievement has been the publication in Cleveland,

128 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

Ohio, of the seventy-three volumes of Jesuit Relations
written during two centuries by missionaries in North
America to their superiors in France or Italy. Such
things speak eloquently of the change that has come
over us. They show that while we can still draw les-
sons from the Roman Forum and the Frankish Field-
of-March, we have awakened to the fact that the New
England town-meeting also has its historic lessons.
Now when we come to the early history of Connecti-
cut and consider the circumstances under which it was
founded, we are soon impressed with the unusual sig-
nificance and importance of every step in the story.
We are soon brought to see that the secession of the
three river towns from Massachusetts was an event no
less memorable than the voyage of the Mayflower or
the arrival of Winthrop’s great colony in Massachu-
setts Bay. In order to appreciate its significance, we
may begin by pointing out one very marked and _ no-
ticeable peculiarity of the early arrangement and dis-
tribution of population in New England. It formed
a great contrast to what occurred in Virginia. The
decisive circumstance which insured the success of the
Virginia colony after its early period of distress some-
times reaching despair, was the growing European
demand for tobacco. The commercial basis of Old
Virginia’s existence was the exportation of tobacco
raised upon large estates along the bank of the James
and neighbouring rivers. Now we find that colony
growing steadily inland ina compact mass presenting
a united front against the wilderness and its denizens.
We do not find a few settlements on James River, a few ©
on the Rappahannock, and another group perhaps at
Lynchburg, quite out of military supporting distance

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 129

of each other; in other words, we do not find a group
of distinct communities, but we find one little state,
the further development of which might make a great
state, as it did, but could never make a federation of
states. If we look at such a colony as Pennsylvania,
where Church and State were from the outset com-
pletely separated, quite as much as in Rhode Island,
we find a similar compactness of growth; we find the
colony presenting to the wilderness a solid front. If
we next consider New Netherland, we notice a slight
difference. There we find a compact colony with its
centre on Manhattan Island, and far up the river an-
other settlement at Albany quite beyond easy support-
ing distance and apparently exposed to all the perils of
the wilderness. But this settlement of Albany is read-
ily explained, for there was the powerful incentive of
the rich fur trade, while the perils of the wilderness
were in great measure eliminated by the firm alliance
between Dutchmen and Mohawks.

Now when we come to the settlement of New Eng-
land, we find things going very differently. Had the
Puritan settlers behaved like most other colonists, their
little state, beginning on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay, would have grown steadily and compactly west-
ward, pushing the Indians before it. First, it would
have brushed away the Wampanoags and Naticks;
then the Narragansetts and Nipmucks would have
succumbed to them, and in due course of time they
would have reached the country of the Pequots and
Mohegans. That would have been like the growth of
Virginia. It would have been a colonial growth of the
ordinary type and it would have resulted in a single
New England state, not in a group bearing that name.

2K

130 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

Very different from this was the actual course of
events. Instead of this solid growth, we find within
the first ten years after Winthrop’s arrival in Massa-
chusetts Bay that while his colony was still in the
weakness of infancy, even while its chief poverty, as
John Cotton said, was poverty in men, the new
arrivals instead of reinforcing it, marched off into the
wilderness, heedless of danger, and formed new colo-
nies for themselves. This phenomenon is so singular
as to demand explanation, and the explanation is not
far to seek. We shall find it in the guiding purpose
which led the Puritans of that day to cross the ocean
in quest of new homes. |

What was that guiding purpose? This is a subject
upon which cheap moralizing has abounded. We have
been told that the Puritans came to New England in
search of religious liberty, and that with reprehensible
want of consistency, they proceeded to trample upon
religious liberty as ruthlessly as any of the churches
that had been left behind in the old world. We often
hear it said that Mrs. Hemans laboured under a fond
delusion when she wrote

“ They have left unstained what there they found,
Freedom to worship God.”

By no means! cry the modern critics of the Puritans;
their record in respect of religious freedom was as far
as possible from stainless. From much of the modern
writing on this well-worn theme one would almost sup-
pose that religious bigotry had never existed in the
world until the settlement of New England; one would
almost be led to fancy that racks and thumb-screws
and the stake had never been heard of.

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 131

Now the difficulty with this sort of historic criticism
is that it deals too much in vague generalities and
quite overlooks the fact that there were Puritans and
Puritans, that the God-fearing men of that stripe were
not all cast in the same mould, like Professor Clerk
Maxwell’s atoms. I have more than once heard people
allude to the restriction of the suffrage to church mem-
bers in the early days of Massachusetts and Connecti-
cut, which is very much as if one were to make state-
ments about the despotic government of Czar Nicholas
and Queen Victoria. Still more frequently do people
confound the men of Plymouth with the very different
company that founded Boston. As to Mrs. Hemans,
her remark was not so very far from the truth if
restricted to the colony of the Pilgrims, about which
she was writing. On the whole, the purpose of that
little band of Pilgrims was to secure freedom to wor-
ship after their own fashion, and similar freedom they
were measurably ready to accord to those who came
among them. They had witnessed in Holland the
good effects of religious liberty, and their attitude of
mind was largely determined by the strong personal
qualities of such men as John Robinson, William
Bradford, and Edward Winslow, who were all noted for
breadth, gentleness, and tact. The record of Plymouth
is not quite unstained by persecution, but it is an emi-
nently good one for the seventeenth century; the cases
are few and by no means flagrant.

With the colony of Massachusetts Bay the circum-
stances were entirely different. That colony was at
the outset a commercial company, like the great com-
pany which founded Virginia and afterward had such
an interesting struggle with James I., ending in the loss

132 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

of the Virginia Company’s charter and its destruction
as a political body. This fate served as a warning five
years later to the Massachusetts Bay Company. In-
stead of staying in London where hostile courts and
the means of enforcing their hostile decrees were too
near at hand, they decided to carry their charter across
the ocean and carry out their cherished purposes as
far removed as possible from interference. Their
commercial aims were but a cloak to cover the pur-
pose they had most at heart, —a purpose which could
not be avowed by any party of men seeking for a royal
charter. Their purpose was to found a theocratic
commonwealth, like that of the children of Israel in
the good old days before their froward hearts con-
ceived the desire for a king. There was no thought
of throwing off allegiance to the British crown; but
saving such allegiance, their purpose was to build up
a theocratic society according to their own notions,
and not for one moment did they propose to tolerate
among them any persons whom they deemed unfit or
unwilling to codperate with them in their scheme.
As for religious toleration, they scouted the very idea
of the thing. There was no imputation which they
resented more warmly than the imputation of treating
heretics cordially, as they were treated in the Nether-
lands. The writings of Massachusetts men in the seven-
teenth century leave no possibility of doubt on this point.
John Cotton was not a man of persecuting tempera-
ment, but of religious liberty he had a very one-sided
conception. According to Cotton, it is wrong for
error to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of
truth to persecute error. Which reminds one of the
Hottentot chief’s fine ethical distinction between right

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 133

and wrong: “ Wrong is when somebody runs off with
my wife; right is when I run off with some other
fellow’s wife.” As for Nathaniel Ward, the “Simple
Cobbler of Agawam,” he tells us that there are people
in the world who say, “that men ought to have liberty
of their conscience, and that it is persecution to debar
them of it.’ And what answer has the Simple Cobbler
to make? He is for the moment struck dumb. He
declares, “ I can rather stand amazed than reply to this ;
it is an astonishment to think that the brains of men
should be parboiled in such impious ignorance; let all
the wits under the heavens lay their heads together
and find an assertion worse than this ... and I will
petition to be chosen the universal idiot of the world.”
The reverend gentleman who writes in this pungent
style was the person who drew up the first code
adopted in Massachusetts, the code which is known as
its “ Body of Liberties.” One and all, these men who
shaped the policy of Massachusetts would have echoed
with approval the sentiment of the Scottish divine,
Rutherford, who declared that toleration of all religions
is not far removed from blasphemy. Holding such
opinions, they resented the imputation of tolerance in
much the same spirit as that in which most members
of the Republican party in the years just preceding
our Civil War resented the imputation of being
Abolitionists.

While the founders of Massachusetts thus stoutly
opposed religious liberty their opinions did not bear
their worst fruits until after the middle of the century,
when men of persecuting temperament like Norton
and Endicott acquired control. In the earlier years
the fiery zeal of such men as Wilson and Dudley was

134 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

tempered by the fine tact and moderation of Winthrop
and Cotton. Winthrop’s view of such matters was
interesting and suggestive. In substance it was as
follows: Here we are in the wilderness, a band of
exiles who have given up all the comforts of our old
homes, all the tender associations of the land we love
best, in order to found a state according to a precon-
ceived ideal in which most of us agree. We believe
it to be important that the members of a Christian
commonwealth should all hold the same opinions re-
garding essentials, and of course it is for us to deter-
mine what are essentials. If people who have come
here with us hold different views, they have made a
great mistake and had better go back to England.
But if, holding different views, they still wish to remain
in America, let them leave us in peace, and going
elsewhere, found communities according to their con-
ceptions of what is best. We do not wish to quarrel
with them, but we will tell them plainly that they can-
not stay here. Is there not, in this vast wilderness,
enough elbow-room for many God-fearing communities?

It was in accordance with this policy that when
the first Congregational church was organized at
Salem, two gentlemen who disapproved of the pro-
ceedings were sent on board ship and carried back to
England. And again, when profound offence had
been taken at certain things said by Roger Williams .
and there was some talk of sending him to England,
he was privately notified by Winthrop that if he would
retire to some place beyond the Company’s jurisdic-
tion, such as Narragansett Bay, he need not fear
molestation. This was virtually banishment, though
not so sharp and harsh as that which was visited upon

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 135

Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends after their conviction
of heresy by a tribunal sitting in what is now Cam-
bridge. Some of these heretics led by John Wheel-
wright went northward to the Piscataqua country.
At the mouth of that romantic stream the Episcopal
followers of Mason and Gorges had lately founded the
town of Portsmouth, and Wheelwright’s people, in
settling Exeter and Hampton, found these Episco-
palians much pleasanter neighbours than they had left
in Boston. As for Mrs. Hutchinson and her remain-
ing friends, they found new homes upon Rhode Island.
A few years later that eccentric agitator, Samuel
Gorton, whom neither Plymouth nor even Providence
nor Rhode Island could endure, bought land for him-
self on the western shore of Narragansett Bay and
made the beginnings of Warwick.

From these examples we see that the principal cause
of the scattering of New England settlers in communi-
ties somewhat remote from each other was inability to
agree on sundry questions pertaining to religion. It
should be observed in passing that their differences of
opinion seldom related to points of doctrine, but almost
always to points of church government or religious
discipline. For the most part they were questions on
the borderland between theology and politics. Be-
tween the settlements here mentioned the differences
were strongly marked. While Winthrop’s followers
insisted upon the union of Church and State, those of
Roger Williams insisted upon their complete separa-
tion. The divergences of the New Hampshire people
and those of the Newport colony had somewhat more
of a doctrinal complexion, being implicated with sun-
dry speculations as to salvation by grace and salvation

136 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

by works. These examples have prepared us to under-
stand the case of Connecticut. The secession which
gave rise to Connecticut was attended by no such
stormy scenes as were witnessed at the banishment of
Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson, yet it included a
greater number of elements of historic significance and
was in many ways the most important and remarkable
of the instances of segmentation which occurred in
early New England.

When the charter of the Massachusetts Company was
brought to the western shore of the Atlantic, the mere
fact of separation from England sufficed to transmute
the commercial corporation into a self-governing re-
public. The company had its governor, its deputy-
governor, and its council of eighteen assistants, as
was commonly the case with commercial joint-stock
companies. In London this governing board would
have exercised almost autocratic control over the
transactions of the company, although politically it
would have remained a body unknown to law, how-
ever much influence it might have exerted. But on
American soil the company at once became a political
body, and its governor, deputy-governor, and assistants
became the ruling head of a small republic consisting
of the company’s settlers in Salem, Charlestown, Boston,
Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and a little group of
houses halfway between Watertown and Boston and
known for a while simply as the New Town. This
designation indicated its comparative youth; it was
about a year younger than its sister towns! Nothing
was said in the charter about a popular representative
assembly, and at first the government did not feel the
need of one. They were men of strong characters,

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 137

who knew what they wanted and intended to have it.
They had selected the New Town for a seat of govern-
ment, since it was somewhat less exposed to destruc-
tion from a British fleet than Boston; and these men
were doing things well calculated to arouse the ire of
King Charles. They felt themselves quite competent
to sit in the New Town and make laws which should
be binding upon all the neighbouring settlements. But
they soon received a reminder that such was not the
way in which freeborn Englishmen like to be treated.
In 1631 the governor, deputy-governor, and assistants
decided that on its western side the New Town was too
much exposed to attacks from Indians. Accordingly,
it was voted that a palisade should be built extending
about half a mile inland from Charles River, and a tax
was assessed upon the towns to meet the expense of
this fortification. The men of Watertown flatly re-
fused to pay their share of this tax because they were
not represented in the body which imposed it. These
proceedings were followed by a great primary assembly
of all the settlers competent to vote and it was decided
that hereafter each town should send representatives
to a general assembly, the assent of which should be
necessary to all the acts of the governor and his coun-
cil. Thus was inaugurated the second free republican
government of America, the first having been inaugu-
rated in Virginia thirteen years before, and both having
been copied from the county government of England
in the old English county court.’

1“ The experiment of federalism is not a newone. The Greeks applied
to it their supple and inventive genius with many interesting results, but
they failed because the only kind of popular government they knew was
the town-meeting; and of course you cannot bring together forty or fifty
town-meetings from different points of the compass to some common centre

138 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

The protest of the Watertown men gave expression
to a feeling that had many sympathizers in Dorchester
and the New Town. For some reason these three
towns happened to contain a considerable proportion
of persons not fully in sympathy with the aims of
Winthrop and Cotton and the other great leaders of
the Puritan exodus. In the theocratic state which
these leaders were attempting to found, one of the
corner-stones, perhaps the chiefest corner-stone, was
the restriction of the rights of voting and holding civil
office to members of the Congregational Church qual-
ified for participation in the Lord’s Supper. The
ruling party in Massachusetts Bay believed that this
restriction was necessary in order to guard against
hidden foes and to assure sufficient power to the
clergy; but there were some who felt that the restric-
tion would give to the clergy more power than was
likely to be wisely used, and that its tendency was
distinctly aristocratic. The minority which held these
democratic views was more strongly represented in
Dorchester, Watertown, and the New Town than
elsewhere. Here, too, the jealousy of encroachments
upon local self-government was especially strong, as
illustrated in the protest of Watertown above men-
tioned. It is also a significant fact that in 1633
to carry on the work of government by discussion. But our forefathers
under King Alfred, a thousand years ago, were familiar with a device which
it had never entered into the mind of Greek or Roman to conceive: they
sent from each township a couple of esteemed men to be its representatives
in the county court. Here was an institution that admitted of indefinite
expansion. That old English county court is now seen to have been the
parent of all modern popular legislatures.” [This and the succeeding
notes are quoted from an address delivered by Dr. Fiske, October Io,

1901, at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Middle-
town. ]

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 139

Watertown and Dorchester led the way in instituting
town government by selectmen.

In September, 1633, there arrived upon the scene
several interesting men, three of whom call for
special mention. These were John Haynes, Samuel
Stone, and Thomas Hooker. Haynes was born in
Copford Hall, Essex, but the date of his birth is un-
known, and the same may be said of the details of his
early life. He is now remembered as the first governor
of Connecticut and as having served in that capacity
every alternate year until his death. He has been
described as a man “of large estate and larger affec-
tions; of heavenly mind and spotless life, sagacious,
accurate, and dear to the people by his benevolent
virtues and disinterested conduct.” Samuel Stone
was born in Hertford in 1602, and was graduated at
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1627, being already
known as a shrewd and tough controversialist, abound-
ing in genial humour and sometimes sparkling with
wit. Thomas Hooker was an older man, having
been born in Markfield, Leicestershire, in 1586. He
was graduated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and
afterward became a fellow of that College. In 1626
he was appointed assistant to a clergyman in Chelms-
ford and preached there, but in 1630 was forbidden to
preach by Archbishop Laud. For a while Hooker
stayed in his home near Chelmsford and taught a school
in Little Braddon, where he had for an assistant
teacher John Eliot, afterward famous as the apostle to
the Indians. This lasted but a few months. Things
were made so disagreeable for Hooker that before the
end of 1630 he made his way to Holland and stayed
there until 1633, preaching in Rotterdam and Delft.

140 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

At length, in the summer of 1633, he decided to go to
New England and sailed in the good ship Gréffin.
In the same ship came Haynes and Stone, and upon
their arrival in Massachusetts Bay all three established
themselves at the New Town, which was soon to be
called Cambridge. In the preceding year a congrega-
tion from Braintree in Essex had come over to Mas-
sachusetts and begun to settle near Mount Wollaston,
where they left the name of Braintree on the map; but
presently they removed to the New Town, where their
accession raised the population to something like five
hundred souls. Hooker, upon his arrival, was chosen
pastor and Stone was chosen teacher of the New
Town church.

During the ensuing year expressions of dissent from
the prevailing policy began to be heard more distinctly
than before in the New Town. Among the questions
which then agitated the community was one which
concerned the form which legislation should take.
Many of the people expressed a wish that a code of
laws might be drawn up, inasmuch as they naturally
wished to know what was to be expected of law-abid-
ing citizens; but the general disposition of the min-
isters was to withstand such requests and to keep things
undecided until a body of law should grow up through
the decisions of courts in which the ministers them-
selves played a leading part. The controversy over
this question was kept up until 1647, when the popular
party, if we may so call it, carried the day, and caused
a code of lawto be framed. This code, of which
Nathaniel Ward was the draughtsman, was known as
the Body of Liberties. In all this prolonged discus-
sion the representative assembly was more or less

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION I4I

opposed by the council of assistants. In short, there
was a very clear division in Massachusetts between
what we may call the aristocratic and democratic
parties. Perhaps it would also be correct to distinguish
them as the theocratic and secular parties. On the
one side were the clergymen and aristocrats who
wished to make political power the monopoly of a few,
while on the other hand a considerable minority of the
people wished to secularize the politics of the commu-
nity and place it upon a broader basis. The foremost
spokesmen of these two parties were the two great
ministers, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker. Both
were men of force, sagacity, tact, and learning. They
were probably the two most powerful intellects to be
found on Massachusetts Bay. Their opinions were
clearly expressed. Hooker said, “In matters of
greater consequence, which concern the common good,
a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses
which concern all, I conceive, under favour, most suit-
able to rule and most safe for relief of the whole.”
Here we have one of the fundamental theorems of
democracy stated in admirably temperate language.
On the other hand, Cotton said, “ Democracy I do
not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit govern-
ment either for church or commonwealth.’ Hooker
also had more or less discussion with Winthrop, in
which it appeared that the ideal of the former was
government of the people by the people, while that of
the latter was government of the people by a selected
few.

Among the principal adherents of Hooker were
John Warham, the pastor, and John Maverick, the
teacher, of Dorchester, both of them natives of Exeter

142 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

in Devonshire. There was also George Phillips, a
graduate of Cambridge, who had since 1630 been pas-
tor of the church at Watertown. Another adherent
was Roger Ludlow of Dorchester, a brother-in-law of
Endicott. Ludlow had been trained for the bar and
was one of the most acute and learned of the Puritan
settlers. The vicissitudes of his life might perhaps
raise a suspicion that wherever there was a govern-
ment, he was “agin it.” At all events, he was con-
spicuous in opposition at the time of which we are
speaking.

By 1635 many reports had come to Boston of the
beautiful smiling fields along the Connecticut River.
Attention had been called to the site of Hartford,
because here the Dutch had built a rude blockhouse
and exchanged defiances with boats from Plymouth
coming up the river. At the river’s mouth the Say-
brook fort, lately founded, served to cut off the Dutch
fortress of Good Hope from its supports on the Hud-
son River, and all the rest of what is now Connecticut
was rough and shaggy woodland. All at once it ap-
peared that in the congregations of Dorchester, Water-
town, and the New Town, a strong desire had sprung
up of migrating to the banks of the Connecticut.
There was no unseemly controversy, as in the cases
of Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson. This case
was not parallel to theirs, for Hooker was no heresiarch
and Massachusetts was most anxious to keep him and
his friends. To lose three large congregations would
but aggravate its complaint of poverty in men. More-
over, antagonists like Hooker and Cotton knew how
to be courteous. When the discontented congrega-
tions petitioned the General Court for leave to with-

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 143

draw from the neighbourhood, the reasons which they
alleged were so ludicrous as to make it plain that they
were merely set forth as pretexts to do duty instead
of the real reasons. It was alleged, for example, that
they had not room enough to pasture their cattle. The
men who said this must have had to hold their sides
to keep from bursting with laughter. Not enough room
in Cambridge for five hundred people to feed their
cattle! Why, then, did they not simply send a swarm
into the adjacent territory, — into what was by and by
to be parcelled out as Lexington and Concord and
Acton? Why flit a hundred miles through the wilder-
ness and seek an isolated position open to attack from
many quarters? Itis impossible to read the fragmen-
tary records without seeing that the weighty questions
were kept back; but there is one telltale fact which is
worth reams of written description. In the state
which these men went away and founded on the banks
of our noble river there was no limitation of the suf-
frage to members of the churches. In words of per-
fect courtesy the ministers and magistrates of Boston
deprecated the removal of a light-giving candlestick,
but the candlestick could not be prevailed on to stay,
and the leave so persistently sought was reluctantly
granted.

A wholesale migration ensued. About eight hundred
persons made their way through the forest to their new
homes on the farther bank of the Connecticut River.
The Dorchester congregation made the settlement
which they called at first by the same name, but presently
changed it to Windsor. The men from Watertown
built a new Watertown lower down, which was pres-
ently rechristened Wethersfield; and between them

144 CONNECTICUT'S INFLUENCE

the congregation from the New Town, led by its pastor
and teacher, halted near the Dutch fort and called their
settlement Hartford, after Stone’s English birthplace.
About half of the migration seems to have come to
Hartford, and the wholesale character of it may be best
appreciated when we learn that of the five hundred
inhabitants of Cambridge at the beginning of the year,
only fifty were left at the end of it. Truly, our good
city on the Charles was well-nigh depopulated. A great
many empty houses would have been consigned to decay
but for one happy circumstance. Just as Hooker’s peo-
ple were leaving, a new congregation from England was
arriving. These were the learned Thomas Shepard
and his people. They needed homes, of course, and
the houses of the seceders were to be had at reason-
able prices. I cannot refrain from mentioning, before
taking my departure from this part of the subject with
the seceders, that Shepard’s people were much more in
harmony with the Massachusetts theocracy than their
predecessors. Indeed, when in that very year it was
decided that the colony must have a college, it was
further decided to place it in the New Town where its
students and professors might sit under the preaching
of Mr. Shepard, a man so acute and diligent in detect-
ing and eradicating heresy that it could by no possi-
bility acquire headway in his neighbourhood. Thus
Harvard College was founded by graduates of the
ancient university on the Cam; and thus did the New
Town at last acquire its name of Cambridge. But alas
for human foresight! The first president that Harvard
had was expelled from his place for teaching heresy,
being neither more nor less than a disbeliever in the
propriety of infant baptism !

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 145

At first the seceders said nothing about escaping
from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, and indeed, the
permission granted to the Watertown congregation ex-
pressly provided that in their new home they should
remain a part of that commonwealth. What Hooker
and his friends may have at first intended we do not
really know. One thing is clear: they waited until
their new homes were built before they took the great
question of government in hand. At about the same
time a party from Roxbury migrated westward and
founded Springfield higher up the river. Their leader,
William Pynchon, was more than once in very bad
repute with the people of Boston; and some years later
he published in London a treatise on the Atonement,
which our Boston friends solemnly burned in the mar-
ket-place by order of the General Court.

For a couple of years the affairs of Windsor, Hart-
ford, and Wethersfield were managed by a commission
from Massachusetts in which William Pynchon and
Roger Ludlow were the leading spirits. There was a
difference in the position of Springfield and the three
lower towns with reference to the government in
Boston. The charter of the Massachusetts Company
granted it a broad strip of land running indefinitely
westward. With the imperfect geographical know-
ledge of that time and in the entire absence of surveys,
it was possible for Massachusetts to claim Springfield
as situated within her original grant. No such claim,
however, was possible in the case of the three lower
towns.' Latitude settled the business for them to the

1“ The new towns, Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, were indispu-
tably outside of the jurisdiction cf Massachusetts in so far as grants from
the crown could go.”

2L

146 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

satisfaction of anybody who could use a sextant. If
they chose to set up for themselves, Massachusetts
could find no reasonable ground upon which to oppose
them. Moreover, it was distinctly bad policy for Mas-
sachusetts to be too exigent in such a matter, or to
make the Connecticut seceders her enemies. Massa-
chusetts was playing a part of extraordinary boldness
with reference to the British government. It took all
the skill and resources of one of the most daring and
sagacious statesmen that ever lived (and such John
Winthrop certainly was) to steer that ship safely among
the breakers that threatened her, and to quarrel with
such worthy friends as the men of Connecticut, except
for some most imperative and flagrant cause, would be
the height of folly.

Thus left quite free to act for themselves, the three
river towns almost from the beginning behaved as an
independent community. In May, 1637, a legislature
called a General Court was assembled at Hartford. A
committee of three from each town, meeting at Hart-
ford, elected six magistrates and administered to them
an oath of office. The government thus established
superseded the commission from Massachusetts, and it
is worth noting that it derived its authority directly
from the three towns. In the nine deputies we have
the germ of the representative assembly, and in the six
elected magistrates we have the analogue of the Mas-
sachusetts council of assistants.

The relations of the towns, however, needed better
definition, and on the 14th of January, 1639, a conven-
tion met at Hartford which framed and adopted a
written constitution, creating the commonwealth of
Connecticut. The name of this written constitution

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 147

was “The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut.” ’
These Orders, as already observed, placed no ecclesi-
astical restrictions upon the suffrage, but gave it to all
admitted freemen who had taken the oath of fidelity to
the commonwealth; and lest there should be any doubt
who were to be regarded as admitted freemen, the Gen-
eral Court afterward declared that the phrase meant
all who had been admitted by a town. From this it
appears that in Connecticut the towns were the original
sources of power, just as in our great federal republic
the original sources of power are the states. It was
perfectly well understood that each town was absolutely
self-governing in all that related to its own local affairs,
and that all powers not expressly conferred upon the
General Court by these Fundamental Orders remained
with the town. One express direction to the towns
reminds one of the provision in our Federal Constitu-
tion that it shall guarantee to each state a republican
form of government. In like manner the Funda-
mental Orders provide that each town shall choose a
number of its inhabitants not exceeding seven to admin-
ister its affairs from year to year. With regard to the
General Court, it was ordered that each town should
send four deputies to represent it until the number of
towns should so increase that this rule would make an
assembly inconveniently large, in which case the num-

1“ This was the first instance known to history in which a common-
wealth was created in such a way. Much eloquence has been expended
over the compact drawn up and signed by the Pilgrims in the cabin of the
Mayflower, and that is certainly an admirable document; but it is not a
constitution ; it does not lay down the lines upon which a government is to
be constructed. It is simply a promise to be good and to obey the laws.
On the other hand, the ‘Fundamental Orders of Connecticut’ summon
into existence a state government which is, with strict limitations, para-
mount over the local governments of the three towns, its creators.”

148 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

ber for each town might be reduced. The noticeable
feature is that the towns were to be equally represented,
without regard to their population. This feature gives
a distinctly federal character to this remarkable con-
stitution. In the face of this fact it cannot well be
denied that the original Connecticut was a federation
of towns. A careful and detailed study of the history
of the two states would further convince us that the
town has always had more importance in Connecticut
than in Massachusetts.

With regard to the governor, there was to be a sys-
tem of popular election without any preliminary nomi-
nation. An election was to be held each year in the
spring, at which every freeman was entitled to hand to
the proper persons a paper containing the name of the
person whom he desired for governor. The papers
were then counted and the name which was found on
the greatest number of ballots was declared elected.
Here we have the popular election by a simple plural-
ity vote. As for the six magistrates, the deputies from
each town in the General Court might nominate two
candidates, and the court as a whole might nominate
as many more as it liked. This nomination was not
to be acted upon until the next or some subsequent
meeting of the Court. When the time came for
choosing six, the secretary read the names of the
candidates, and in the case of each candidate every
freeman was to bring in a written ballot which signi-
fied a vote in his favour, and a blank ballot which was
equivalent to a black-ball, and he who had more votes
than black-balls was chosen.

Into the details of this constitution I need not go,
but may dismiss it with a few general remarks.

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 149

In the first place, 2¢ was the first written constitu-
tion known to history that created a government.

Secondly, tt makes no alluston to any sovereign

beyond seas, nor to any source of authority whatever
except the three towns themselves.
_ Thirdly, tt created a state which was really a tiny
federal republic, and it recognized the principle of
federal equality by equality of representation among
the towns, while at the same time it recognized popu-
lar sovereignty by electing its governor and its Upper
Flouse by a plurality vote.

Fourthly, let me repeat, tt conferred upon the Gen-
eval Court only such powers as were expressly granted.
L[n these pecuharities we may see how largely zt served
as a precedent for the Constitution of the United
States.'

1“ This is not the place for inquiring into the origin of written constitu-
tions. Their precursors in a certain sense were the charters of medizval
towns, and such documents as the Great Charter of 1215 by which the
English sovereign was bound to respect sundry rights and liberties of his
people. Our colonial charters were in a sense constitutions, and laws that
infringed them could be set aside by the courts. By rare good fortune,
aided by the consummate tact of the younger Winthrop, Connecticut
obtained in 1662 such a charter, which confirmed her in the possession of
her liberties. But these charters were always, in form at least, a grant of
privileges from an overlord to a vassal, something given or bartered bya
superior to an inferior. With the constitution which created Connecticut
it was quite otherwise. You may read its eleven articles from beginning
to end, and not learn from it that there was ever such a country as England
or such a personage as the British sovereign. It is purely a contract, in
accordance with which we the people of these three river towns propose to
conduct our public affairs. Here is the form of government which com-
mends itself to our judgment, and we hereby agree to obey it while we
reserve the right to amend it. Unlike the Declaration of Independence,
this document contains no theoretical phrases about liberty and equality,
and it is all the more impressive for their absence. It does not deem it
necessary to insist upon political freedom and upon equality before the law,
but it takes them for granted and proceeds at once to business. Surely

150 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

But it was not only in the league of the three river
towns that the principles of town autonomy and feder-
ation were asserted. Let us turn aside for a moment
and consider some of the circumstances under which
the sister colony of New Haven was founded. The
headlong overthrow of the Pequots in the spring of
1637 and the pursuit of the fugitive remnant of the
tribe had made New England settlers acquainted with
the beautiful shores of Long Island Sound. Just at
that time a new company arrived in Boston from
England. The general purpose of these newcomers
was nearly identical with that of the magistrates in
Boston.: They desired a theocratic government of
aristocratic type in which the clergy and magistrates
should possess the chief share of power, and they also,
like the Boston clergy, were unwilling for the present
to concede a definite code of laws. Why, then, did not
this new party remain in the neighbourhood of Boston?
They would have done much toward healing that
complaint of poverty in men of which John Cotton
spoke; and one would suppose moreover that after
having recently suffered from so large a secession as
that which founded the three river towns of Connecti-
cut the Boston people would have been over-anxious
to retain these newcomers in their neighbourhood.
Nevertheless, it was amicably arranged that the new
party, of which John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton
were the leaders, should try its fortunes on the coast
of Long Island Sound. Massachusetts colony of
course had no authority to restrain them. If they
chose to go outside the limits of the Massachusetts

this was the true birth of American democracy, and the Connecticut Val-
ley was its birthplace!”

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION I5I

charter and thus be free at once from its restrictions
and its protection, it was open to them to do so.
What could have been their motive? The records
of the time leave us in some doubt, but I suspect that
they found the minority in Massachusetts too trouble-
some. There was a very considerable minority which
disapproved of the theocratic policy, and although it
had been weakened by the departure of the Connecticut
men, yet it still remained troublesome and grew more
so from year to year until after two generations it con-
tributed to the violent overthrow of the Massachusetts
charter. In the summer of 1637 the air of Boston was
dense with complaints of theological and _ political
strife, and one may believe that the autocratic Daven-
port preferred to try his fortunes in a new and untried
direction. Not only was the Old World given over
to the Man of Sin, but that uncomfortable personage
had even allowed his claws and tail to make an appear-
ance among the saints of Boston.

For such reasons, doubtless, the Davenport party
came into the Sound and chose for their settlement
the charming bay of Quinnipiac. They called their
settlement New Haven, with a double meaning, as
commemorating old English associations and as an
earnest of the spiritual rest which they hoped to secure.
In the course of the years 1638 and 1639 settlements
were also made at Milford and Guilford and in 1640
at Stamford. Somewhat later the towns of Bramford
and Southold on Long Island were added.’

1“ Tn the eventful year 1639, Roger Ludlow, of Windsor, led a swarm to
Fairfield, the settlement of which was soon followed by that of Stratford at
the mouth of the Housatonic River. This forward movement separated
Stamford from its sister towns of the New Haven republic. Then in 1644
Connecticut bought Saybrook from the representatives of the grantees, Lord

152 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

Now these infant towns did not at the first moment
form themselves into a commonwealth, but they re-
tained each its autonomy like the towns of ancient
Greece, and each of these independent towns was little
else than an independent congregation. All over New
England the town was practically equivalent to the
parish. In point of fact it was the English parish
brought across the ocean and self-governing, without
any subjection to a bishop. But nowhere perhaps
was the identification of Church and State in the
affairs of the town so complete as in these little
communities on the banks of the Sound. In June of
1639, less than half a year after the constitution of
Connecticut, the planters of New Haven held a meet-
ing in Robert Newman’s lately finished barn, and
agreed upon a constitution for New Haven. Mr.
Davenport began by preaching a sermon from the text
“Wisdom hath builded her house; she hath hewn
out her seven pillars.” After the sermon six funda-
mental orders were submitted to the meeting and
adopted by a show of hands. The general purport of
these orders was that only church members could vote
and hold office. Even in that gathering of saints such
a rule would disfranchise many, and it was not adopted
without some opposition. It was then provided that
all the freemen (that is, church members) should

Saye and his friends, and in the next year a colony planted at the mouth of
Pequot River was afterward called New London, and the name of the river
was changed to Thames. Apparently Connecticut had an eye to the main
chance, or, in modern parlance, to the keys of empire; at all events, she
had no notion of being debarred from access to salt water, and while she
seized the mouths of the three great rivers, she claimed the inheritance of
the Pequots, including all the lands where that domineering tribe had ever
exacted tribute.”

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 153

choose twelve of their number as electors, and that
these twelve should choose the seven magistrates who
were to administer the affairs of the settlement. These
magistrates were really equivalent to selectmen; they
were known as pillars of the church. It was further-
more agreed that the Holy Scriptures contain perfect
rules for the ordering of all affairs civil and domestic
as well as ecclesiastical. So far was this principle ap-
plied that New Haven refused to have trial by jury
because no such thing could be found in the Mosaic
law. The assembling of freemen for an annual elec-
tion was simply the meeting of church members to
choose the twelve electors, while the rest of the people
had nothing to say. It was therefore as far as possible
from the system adopted by the three river towns.
The constitution of Connecticut was democratic, that
of New Haven aristocratic. Connecticut, moreover,
at its beginning was a federation of towns; New
Haven at its beginning was simply a group of towns
juxtaposed but not confederated.

Nevertheless, circumstances soon drove the New
Haven towns into federation, and here for a moment
let us pause to consider how federation was inevitably
involved in this whole process which we have been
considering. We have seen that the principal reason
why New England did not develop into a single solid
state like Virginia or Pennsylvania, but into a conge-
ries of scattered communities, was to be found in the
slight but obstinate differences between different par-
ties of settlers on questions mainly of church polity,
sometimes of doctrine; and we must remember that
the isolation of these communities was greater than we
can easily realize, because our minds are liable to be

154 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

confused by the consolidation that has come since.
There were three or four towns on the Piscataqua as
a beginning for New Hampshire; there were ten or
twelve towns about Boston harbour; two or three in
Plymouth colony; two or three more on Rhode Island
besides Roger Williams’s plantation at Providence,
and presently Gorton’s at Warwick; then there was a
lonely fortress at Saybrook; and lastly, the federation
of Connecticut and the scattered molecules of New
Haven. The first result of so much dispersal had been
a deadly war with the Indians, and although the anni-
hilation of the Pequots served as a dreadful warning
to all red men, yet danger was everywhere so immi-
nent as to make some kind of union necessary for
bringing out in case of need the military strength
of these scattered communities. Thus arose the fa-
mous New England confederation of 1643, in which
Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Ha-
ven united their fortunes." Now when the question of
forming this federation came up, New Haven could
not very well afford to be left out. She possessed only
the territory which she had bought from the Indians,
while Connecticut, with an audacity like that of old
world empires, claimed every rood of land the occu-
pants of which had ever paid tribute to the extin-

1« This act of sovereignty was undertaken without any consultation with
the British government or any reference to it. The Confederacy received
a serious blow in 1662, when Charles II. annexed New Haven, without its
consent, to Connecticut; but it had a most useful career still before it, for
without the aid of a single British regiment or a single gold piece from
the Stuart treasury, it carried New England through the frightful ordeal of
King Philip’s War, and came to an honoured end when it was forcibly dis-
placed by the arbitrary rule of Andros. It would be difficult to overstate
the importance of this New England federation as a preparatory training
for the greater work of federation a century later.”

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 155

guished Pequots. She was laying one finger upon
the Thames River and another upon the Housatonic,
while she sent parties of settlers to Fairfield and Strat-
ford, thus curtailing and invading New Haven’s natu-
ral limits. “In union there is strength,” and so the
towns of the New Haven colony united themselves
into a little federal republic.

I need not pursue this subject, for I have said enough
to indicate the points which concern us to-day. Letme
only mention one interesting feature of the events which
annexed aristocratic New Haven to her democratic
neighbour. When I say aristocratic New Haven, I am
not thinking of dress and furniture and worldly riches;
yet it was a matter of comment that the New Haven
leaders were wealthy, that panelled wainscots and costly
rugs and curtains were seen in their houses when there
was as yet nothing of that sort to be found in the three
river towns, and that they were inclined to plume them-
selves upon possessing the visible refinements of life.
The policy of their theocracy toward the British crown
was very bold, like that of Massachusetts, but it was
imprudent inasmuch as they were far from having the
strength of the older colony. It isa thrilling story, that
of the hunt for the regicides, and Davenport’s defiant
sermon on theoccasion. It was magnificent, but it was
not diplomacy. On the other hand, the policy of Con-
necticut at that time was shaped by a remarkable man,
no less than John Winthrop, son of the great founder
of Massachusetts, a man of vast’ accomplishments,
scientific and literary, a fellow of the Royal Society.
Inheriting much of his father’s combination of audacity
with velvet tact, he knew at once how to maintain the
rights and claims of Connecticut and how to make

156 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

Charles II. think him the best fellow in the world. We
have seen that in making her first constitution Con-
necticut did not so much as allude to the existence of
a British government; but in the stormy times of the
Restoration that sort of thing would no longer do. So
the astute Winthrop sought and obtained a royal charter
which simply gave Connecticut what she had already,
naincly, the government which she had formed for her-
self,and which was so satisfactorily republican that she
did not need to revise it in 1776, but lived on with it
well into the nineteenth century. This charter defined
her territory in such a way as to include naughty New
Haven, which was thus summarily annexed. And how
did New Haven receive this? The disfranchised mi-
nority hailed the news with delight. The disgruntled
theocrats in great part migrated to New Jersey, and the
venerable Davenport went to end his days in Boston.
Between New Haven and Boston the sympathy had
always been strong. The junction with Connecticut
was greatly facilitated by the exodus of malcontents to
New Jersey, and it was not long before the whole of
what is now Connecticut had grown together as an
extensive republic composed of towns whose union
presented in many respects a miniature model of our
present great federal commonwealth.

We may now in conclusion point to the part which
Connecticut played in the formation of the federal con-
stitution under which we live. You will remember that
there was strong opposition to such a constitution in
most of the states. Everywhere there was a lurking
dread of what might be done by a new and untried
continental power, possessing powers of taxation and
having a jurisdiction beyond and in some respects

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 157

above those of the separate thirteen states. You will
remember that the year 1786 was one in which civil
war was threatened in many quarters, and something
approaching civil war actually existed in Massachusetts.
The opposition between North and South was feeble
compared to what it afterward became, yet there was
real danger that the Kentucky settlements would secede
from the Union and be followed by the Southern states.
The jealousy between large and small states was
more bitter than it is now possible for us to realize.
War seemed not unlikely between New York and
New Hampshire, and actually imminent between New
York and her two neighbours, Connecticut and New
Jersey. It was in a solemn mood that our statesmen
assembled in Philadelphia, and the first question to be
settled, one that must be settled before any further
work could be done, was the way in which power was
to be shared between the states and the general gov-
ernment.

It was agreed that there should be two houses in the
federal legislature, and Virginia, whose statesmen, led
by George Washington and James Madison, were tak-
ing the lead in the constructive work of the moment,
insisted that both houses should represent population.
To this the large states assented; while the small
states, led by New Jersey, would have nothing of the
sort, but insisted that representation in the federal
legislature should be only by states. Such an arrange-
ment would have left things very much as they were
under the old federation. It would have left Congress
a mere diplomatic body representing a league of
sovereign states. If such were to be the outcome of
the combination, it might as well not have met.

158 CONNECTICUT’S INFLUENCE

The bitterness and fierceness of the controversy
was extreme. ‘Gunning Bedford of Delaware ex-
claimed to the men of whom James Madison was the
leader: “Gentlemen, I do not trust you. If you
possess the power, the abuse of it could not be
checked; and what then would prevent you from
exercising it to our destruction? Sooner than be
ruined, there are foreign powers who will take us by
the hand.” When talk of this sort could be indulged
in, it was clear that the situation had become danger-
ous. The convention was on the verge of breaking
up, and the members were thinking of going home,
their minds clouded and their hearts rent at the immi-
nency of civil strife, when a compromise was suggested
by Oliver Ellsworth of Windsor, Roger Sherman of
New Haven, and William Samuel Johnson of Strat-
ford, — three immortal names. These men represented
Connecticut, the state which for a hundred and fifty
years had been familiar with the harmonious codper-
ation of the federal and national principles. In the
election of her governor Connecticut was a little
nation; in the election of her assembly she was a little
confederation. However the case may stand under
the altered conditions of the present time, Connecticut
had in those days no reason to be dissatisfied with the
working of her government. Her delegates suggested
that the same twofold principle should be applied on a
continental scale in the new constitution: let the
national principle prevail in the House of Representa-
tives and the federal principle in the Senate.

This happy thought was greeted with approval by
the wise old head of Franklin, but the delegates
obstinately wrangled over it until, when the question

ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 159

of equality of suffrage in the Senate was put to vote,
the compromise went to the verge of defeat. The
result was a tie. Had the vote of Georgia been given
in the negative, it would have defeated the compromise ;
but this catastrophe was prevented by the youthful
Abraham Baldwin, a native of Guilford and lately a
tutor in Yale College, who had recently emigrated to
Georgia. Baldwin was not convinced of the desirable-
ness of the compromise, but he felt that its defeat was
likely to bring about that worst of calamities, the
breaking up of the convention. He prevented such a
calamity by voting for the compromise contrary to his
colleague, whereby the vote of Georgia was divided
and lost.

Thus it was that at one of the most critical moments
of our country’s existence the sons of Connecticut
played a decisive part and made it possible for the
framework of our national government to be com-
pleted. When we consider this noble climax and the
memorable beginnings which led up to it, when we
also reflect the mighty part which federalism is un-
questionably destined to play in the future, we shall
be convinced that there is no state in our Union
whose history will better repay careful study than
Connecticut. Surely few incidents are better worth
turning over and over and surveying from all possi-
ble points of view than the framing of a little con-
federation of river towns at Hartford in January, 1639.

-

hy. -

V

FHE-. DEEPERY SIGNIFICANCE “OF THE
BOSTON “TEA PARTLY

V

THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BOSTON
TEA PARTY.

Ir may be’ one of the symptoms of a wholesome re-
action against the vapid Fourth of July rhetoric of the
past generation that writers of our own day sometimes
betray a tendency to belittle the events of the Revolu-
tionary period. The smoke of that conflict is so far
cleared away as to enable us to see that sometimes the
popular leaders did things that were clearly wrong ;
we find, too, that all the Tories were not quite so black
as they have been painted; and from such discoveries
a reaction of feeling more or less extensive naturally
arises. In the case of many scholars born and bred in
the neighbourhood of Boston such a reaction has within
the last few years been especially strong and marked.
The immediate cause has doubtless been the publica-
tion of the Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutchinson,
the last royal governor of Massachusetts.

In such waves of feeling there is apt to be a lack of
discrimination ; bad things get praised along with the
good, and good things get blamed along with the bad.
An instance is furnished by an essay on “ Boston
Mobs before the Revolution,” by the late Andrew
Preston Peabody, published in the Adlantec Monthly,
September, 1888. This interesting paper was called
forth by the act of the Massachusetts legislature in
voting a civic monument to Crispus Attucks and the

163

164 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

other victims of the affray in King Street, commonly
known as the “ Boston Massacre.” What we have to
note especially in the paper is the fact that it expressly
includes the Boston Tea Party among the reprehensi-
ble riots of the time, and discerns no difference between
its performance and the sacking of private houses by
drunken ruffians. Furthermore, says Dr. Peabody, “the
illegal seizure of the tea was in a certain sense parallel
to the (so-called) respectable mob that in the infancy of
the antislavery movement nearly killed Garrison, and
made the jail his only safe place of refuge.” This com-
parison makes Dr. Peabody’s view sufficiently explicit.
In connection with the same affair of the Attucks
monument, one of the most eminent historical scholars
of Boston, Mr. Abner C. Goodell, in the course of a
letter to the Boston Advertiser, said: “If the only les-
son that the popular mind has derived from the disor-
derly doings which preceded the Revolution is that
they were the right things to be done and worthy of
perpetual applause, it is high time that we adopt a
rule never to mention such events as the affray in
King Street and the destruction of the tea without
expressions of unqualified disapprobation. Which of
us would permit his sons to engage in such reprehen-
sible proceedings to-day?” This, again, is sufficiently
explicit. The act of the Tea Party is unreservedly
condemned, and no consciousness is indicated of the
points in which it differed from a chance affray. __
It would not be right to leave these expressions of
opinion without further reference to the time when
they were written. Extensive strikes, especially of,
men employed on railroads, and accompanied with
savage attempts at boycotting, had recently occurred

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 165

in St. Louis and other great cities, and something of
the sort had been seen under the very shadow of Har-
vard’s elms in Cambridge. Both Dr. Peabody and
Mr. Goodell make express mention of these recent
disturbances, and either assert or imply that approval
of any of the irregular acts in Boston which preceded
the Revolution is equivalent to approval of modern
boycotting with all its attendant outrages. Now, if
there is any one source of confusion against which the
student of history needs to be eternally vigilant, it is
the tendency to argue from loose or false analogies.
Every one remembers how Mr. Mitford, some seventy
years ago, wrote a History of Ancient Greece under
the influence of his dread of the approaching reform
of Parliament, and a precious mess he made of it. In
his eyes the one thing the Athenians had done for
mankind was to give it an object lesson in the evils of
democracy. Very little insight into history is gained
by studying it in this way; vague generalizations are
grossly misleading; real knowledge is attained only
when the events of a period are studied in their causal
relations to one another amid all their concrete com-
plexity. It is this which makes the study of history,
rightly pursued, such a superb discipline for the intel-
lectual powers. It is this which enables us to reach
conclusions which have the force of reasoned convic-
tions. There is something rather comical in the
spectacle of a writer whose verdicts upon past events
are at the mercy of the next ragamuffin who may throw
a bomb in Chicago or set fire to a barn in Vermont.
The opinions here quoted seem to show that in the
current notions concerning the immediate causes of the
American Revolution there is too much vague generali-

166 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

zation, with a very inadequate grasp of the situation in
its definite and concrete details. It is worth our while,
then, to approach once more the well-worn theme, and
see if it is not possible to make a statement which
shall be at once historically true and fair to all parties
concerned.

First, we must note the fundamental fact out of which
the American Revolution took its rise. A revolution
need not necessarily have arisen from such a fact, but
it did. The fundamental fact was the need for a
continental revenue, whereas no such thing existed as
a continental government with taxing power. This
need was vividly brought out by seventy years of war
with France. At the time of the treaty of Paris, in
1763, the need for a permanent continental government
with taxing power had long been forcibly shown, though
people were everywhere obstinately unwilling to admit
the fact. For seventy-four years the colonies had been
in a condition varying from armed truce to open war-
fare with France. Thestruggle began in 1689, when the
Dutch stadtholder became king of Great Britain, when
Andros was overthrown at Boston, and Leisler seized
the government of New York, and Frontenac was sent
over to Canada with vast designs. Occasionally this
struggle came to a pause, but it was never really ended
till, in 1763, France lost every rood of land she had ever
possessed in North America. At first it was only the
New England colonies and New York that were di-
rectly concerned, and in Leisler’s Congress of 1690 no
colony south of Maryland was represented. But by the
time when Robert Dinwiddie ruled in Virginia all the’
colonies came to be involved, and the war in its latest
stage assumed continental dimensions. Regular troops

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 167

from Great Britain assisted the colonies and were sup-
ported by the imperial exchequer. The colonies con-
tributed men and money to the cause, as it was right
they should; and here the need of a continental taxing
power soon made itself disastrously felt. The drift of
circumstances had brought the thirteen colonies into
the presence of what we may call a continental state
of things, but nowhere was there any single hand that
could take a continental grasp of the situation. There
were thirteen separate governors to ask for money and
thirteen distinct legislatures to grant it. Under these
circumstances the least troublesome fact was that the
colonies remote from the seat of danger for the moment
did not contribute their fair share. Usually the case
was worse than this. It often happened that the legisla-
ture of a colony immediately threatened with invasion
would refuse to make its grant unless it could wring
some concession from the governor in return. Thus,
in Pennsylvania, there was the burning question as to
taxing the proprietary lands, and more than once, while
firebrand and tomahawk were busy on the frontier, did
the legislature sit quietly at Philadelphia, seeking to use
the public distress as a tool with which to force the
governor into submission. It is an old story how it
proved impossible to get horses for the expedition
against Fort Duquesne until Benjamin Franklin sent
around to the farmers and pledged his personal credit
for them. Sometimes the case was even worse, as in
1674, when Pontiac’s confederates were wreaking such
havoc in the Alleghanies, and Connecticut did not feel
sufficient interest in the woes of Pennsylvania to send
them assistance. Such lamentable want of codperation
and promptness often gave advantages to the enemy

168 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

which neutralized their immense and permanent disad-
vantages of fighting on exterior lines.

The royal governors all understood these things, and
felt them keenly. Asa rule they were honourable men,
with a strong sense of responsibility for the welfare of
their provinces. They saw clearly that, to bring out
the military resources of the country, some kind of
continental government with taxing powers was
needed.

Any such continental government was regarded by
the people with fear and loathing. The sentiment of
union between colonies had not come into existence,
the feeling of local independence was intense and jeal-
ous, and a continental government was an unknown
and untried horror. So late as 1788, when grim
necessity had driven the people of the United States
to adopt our present Constitution as the alternative to
anarchy, it was with shivering dread that most of them
accepted the situation. A quarter of a century earlier
the repugnance was much stronger.

It should never be lost sight of that the difficulty
with which the royal governors had to contend in the
days of the French War was exactly the same difficulty
with which the Continental. Congress had to contend
throughout the War of Independence and the critical
period that followed it. We cannot understand Ameri-
can history until this fact has become part of our per-
manent mental structure. The difficulty was exactly
the same; it was the absence of a continental govern-
ment with taxing power. The Continental Congress
had no such power; it could only ask the state legisla-
tures for money, just as the royal governors had done,
and if it took a state three years to raise what was

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 169

sorely needed within three months, there was no help
for it. Hence the slowness and feebleness with which
the War of Independence was conducted. When the
Congress asked for an army of ninety thousand men
for the year 1777, the demand was moderate and could
have been met without a greater strain than was cheer-
fully borne during pur Civil War; but the army fur-
nished in response never reached thirty thousand,
and the following years made even a poorer show.
Our statesmen were then learning by hard experience
exactly what the royal governors had learned before, —
that work of continental dimensions, such as a great
foreign war, required a continental government to
conduct it, and that no government is worthy of the
name unless it can raise money by taxation. After the
peace of 1783 our statesmen were soon taught by
abundant and ugly symptoms that in the absence of
such a government the states were in imminent danger
of falling apart and coming to blows with each other.
It was only this greater dread that drove our people
to do most reluctantly in 1788 what they had scorn-
fully refused to do in 1754, and consent to the estab-
lishment of a continental government with taxing
power. Let us not forget, then, that from first to
last the difficulty was one and the same.

If we had surmounted the difficulty in 1754, the
separation from Great Britain might perhaps not
have occurred at all. In that year the prospect of
an immediate renewal of war with France made it
necessary to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations,
and in the congress that assembled at Albany Benjamin
Franklin proposed a plan which, had it been adopted,
would doubtless have surmounted the difficulty. It

170 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

would have created a federal government, with power
of taxation for federal purposes, with local rights fully
guaranteed, and with a president or governor-general
appointed by the crown. The royal governors of
course approved the plan, the people treated it with
indignant contempt; the difficulty was acutely felt all
through the war, and then the British Parliament, in a
perfectly friendly spirit, tried to mend matters.

The necessity for a continental revenue continued,
and always would continue. Scarcely had peace been
made with France when Pontiac’s terrible war broke
out and furnished fresh illustrations of the perennial
difficulty. Since the Americans would not create a
continental taxing power for themselves, Parliament
must undertake to supply the place of such a power.
The failure of Franklin’s plan of union seemed to
force this work upon Parliament; certainly there was
no other body that could raise money for the requisite
continental purposes.

But when Parliament undertook such a step it ven-
tured upon an untrodden field. No Parliament had
ever raised money in America by direct taxation. As
for port duties the Americans had not actually resisted
them. As for parliamentary legislation, in the very
few instances in which it had been attempted, as for
example in the case of the Massachusetts Land Bank
of 1740, the colonists had submitted with an exceed-
ingly ill grace, as much as to say, “ You had better not
try it again!” According to the theory prevalent in
the colonies and soon to be stated in print by Thomas
Jefferson, they owed allegiance to the king but not to
Parliament. The relation was like that of Hanover to
Great Britain at that time, or like that of Norway

OF THE BOSTON TEA. PARTY I7I

to Sweden at the present day, with one and the same
king but separate and independent legislatures. On
this theory the Americans had practically lived most
of the time. But this point British statesmen and the
British people did not realize. In their minds Parlia-
ment was the supreme body at home; even the king
wore his crown by act of Parliament; in the empire
at large there must be supreme authority somewhere,
and as it clearly was not in the king, it must be in
Parliament.

Accordingly, when George Grenville became prime
minister, just as Pontiac’s war was breaking out, he
saw no harm in raising an American revenue for con-
tinental purposes by act of Parliament. Grenville
cared little for theories of government; he was a man
of business and liked to have things done promptly and
in a shipshape manner. He was willing to have the
Americans raise the revenue themselves; only if they
wouldn’t do it, he would; there must be no more shilly-
shallying. What would be the least annoying kind of
tax for the purpose? Doubtlessa stamp tax. William
Shirley, the very popular royal governor of Massachu-
setts, had said so ten years before, and there seemed
to be reason in it. A stamp tax involves no awkward
questions about private property and incomes, puts no
premium upon lying, and entails as little expense as
possible in its collection. Moreover, it cannot be
evaded, and the proceeds all go into the treasury.
So Grenville got his Stamp Act ready, but with
commendable prudence and courtesy he gave the
Americans a year’s notice in advance, so that if they
had anything better to suggest it might be duly con-
sidered.

172 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

The Americans had no alternative to suggest except
a system of requisitions, — in other words, asking the
thirteen separate legislatures to vote supplies. With
that system they had floundered along for three-quar-
ters of a century, and with it they were to flounder for
a quarter of a century more until their eyes should be
opened. Grenville was tired of so much floundering,
and so he brought in his Stamp Act, about which one
of the most notable things is that Parliament passed
it with scarcely a word of debate. There was no un-
friendly intent in the measure. It was not designed
to take money from American pockets for British pur-
poses. Every penny was to be used in America for
the defence of the colonies. Some of the stamps,
indeed, were higher in price than they need have been,
but on the whole there was little in the Stamp Act for
the Americans to object to except to the principle
upon which the whole thing was based. On that
point Parliament was not sufficiently awake, though
some demonstrations had already been made in Amer-
ica and such men as Hutchinson had warned Grenville
of the danger.

When it was known in America that the Stamp
Act had become law, the resistance took two forms:
there was mob violence, and there was the sober appeal
to reason. From the outset the law was nullified;
people simply would not touch the stamps or have
anything to do with them. The story of the riots in
New York and Boston needs no repetition, but one of
the disgraceful scenes in Boston calls for mention
in order to point the contrast which we shall have to
make hereafter. Thomas Hutchinson, the foremost
scholar of his time in America and the foremost writer,

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 173

except Franklin, was then chief justice of Massachu-
setts. Some people believed him to have instigated
the Stamp Act, which he had really opposed ; others,
without due foundation, suspected him of having in-
formed against sundry respectable citizens as smug-
glers. So one night in August, 1765, a drunken mob
sacked his house, destroyed his furniture and pictures,
and ruined his splendid library. This affair was typi-
cal of riots in general. It started at the suggestion of
some unknown ruffian, its fury fell chiefly upon an
innocent person, and its sole achievement was the
wanton destruction of valuable property. It was an
event in the history of crime, and belongs among such
incidents as fill the Newgate Calendar. How did the
people of Massachusetts treat this affair? Town-
meetings all over the province condemned it in the
strongest terms; the leaders of the mob were thrown
into prison, and the legislature promptly indemnified
Hutchinson for his losses so far as money could repair
them. The whole story shows that Massachusetts had
no fondness for riots and rioters.

Besides such cases of mob violence there was the
sober appeal to reason, and the American case was for
the first time distinctly and fully stated. The princi-
ple of “no taxation without representation ” was clearly
set forth by Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, and
was incorporated in the resolutions adopted by the
congress at New York. This was the formal answer
of the Americans to Parliament. When it reached
that body, it found George Grenville in opposition.
Lord Rockingham had become Prime Minister, and a
bill was brought in for the repeal of the Stamp Act.
That measure had been passed almost without ques-

174 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

tion, but its repeal was the occasion of a debate that
lasted nearly all winter. For the first time the consti-
tutional relations of the colonies to the imperial gov-
ernment were thoroughly discussed, and three distinct
views found expression: 1. The Tories held that
the Stamp Act was all right and ought to be enforced.
2. The New Whigs, represented by William Pitt,
accepted the American doctrine of no taxation with-
out representation, and urged that the Stamp Act
should be repealed expressly as founded upon an erro-
neous principle. 3. The Old Whigs, represented by
Fox and Burke, refrained from committing themselves
to such a doctrine, but considered it bad statesmanship
to insist upon a measure which public opinion in
America unanimously condemned. This third view
prevailed, and the Stamp Act was repealed, while a
Declaratory Resolve asserted the constitutional right
of Parliament to legislate for the colonies in any way
it might see fit.

This result was rightly regarded as a practical vic-
tory for the Americans, but it gave general satisfaction
in England, for it seemed to remove a source of dispute
that had most suddenly and unexpectedly loomed up
in alarming proportions. The rejoicings in London
were no less hearty than in New York. The affair
had been creditably conducted. The dangerous ques-
tion had been argued on broad, statesmanlike grounds,
and the undue claims of Parliament had been virtually
relinquished. It is true, the difficulty in America as
to how that continental revenue was to be raised was-
left untouched. But friendly discussion might at length
find a cure, or the question might be allowed to drop
until some more favourable moment.

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 175

A situation, however, was arising which would soon
put an end to friendly discussion, and which would
neither let the question drop nor deal with it fairly.
It is a pity that great political questions could not
more often be argued in an atmosphere of sweetness
and light. Their solution would exhibit a kind and
degree of sense such as the world is not yet familiar
with. Suppose that in 1860 the Americans, north and
south, could have discussed the whole slavery question
without passion; and suppose that all the slaves had
been set free, and their owners compensated at their
full market value; how small would have been the
cost in dollars and cents compared with the cost of
the Civil War, to say nothing of the saving of life!
Such a supposition seems grotesque, so great is the
difference, in respect of foresight and self-control, be-
tween the human nature implied in it and that with
which we are familiar. It is to be hoped that the
slow modifications wrought by civilized life will by and
by bring mankind to that stage of wisdom which now
seems unattainable; but for many a weary year no
doubt will still be seen the same old groping and stum-
bling, the same old self-defeating selfishness.

In 1766 the questions connected with raising a con-
tinental revenue in America might have been carried
along toward a peaceful settlement, had it been possible
to keep them out of politics. But that was impossible.
The discussion over the Stamp Act had dragged the
American question into British politics, and there was
one wily and restless politician who soon came to stake
his very political existence upon its solution. That pol-
itician was the young king, George III., who was enter-
ing upon his long reign with an arduous problem before

176 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

his mind, how to break down cabinet government and
parliamentary supremacy and convert the British state
into a true monarchy. In order to carry out this pur-
pose he relied chiefly upon a kind of corruption in which
the chief element was the fact that the representation
in the House of Commons had got quite out of gear
with the population of the country. During more than
two centuries the change from medizval into modern
England had come about without any redistribution
of seats in that representative chamber. Some dis-
tricts had been developing new trades and industries,
while others had simply been overgrown with ivy and
moss, until there had arisen that state of things so often
quoted and described, in which Old Sarum without a
human inhabitant had two members of Parliament,
while Birmingham and Manchester had none. There
were not less than a hundred rotten boroughs which
ought to have been disfranchised without a moment’s
delay. They were for the most part implements of
corruption, either bought up or otherwise controlled
by leading Whig or Tory families, or by the king.
For more than seventy years, ever since the expulsion
of the Stuarts, this sort of corruption had been univer-
sally relied on in English politics. During that time
the Tories had been mostly discredited because of the
Jacobite element in their party. This was especially
the case in the reigns of George I. and George II.,
each of which had its Jacobite rebellion to suppress.
The Old Whig families were then all-powerful, the
first two Georges were simply their wards, and under
the long and epoch-making administration of Sir
Robert Walpole the modern system of cabinet govern-
ment was set quite firmly upon its feet. Under this

le i i i el

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 177

state of things with the elder Pitt for leader, England
brought to a triumphant close a truly glorious war, one
of the most important in which she had ever been
engaged. Whenever it was needful for carrying a
point in domestic or foreign policy, the great Whig
leaders made free use of parliamentary corruption,
though Pitt always proudly abstained from such
methods. Much of the time a decisive vote in the
Commons was thrown by members who were simply
owned body and soul by the great Whig families.

When George III. came to the throne in 1760, a
boy of eighteen years, he had learned to regard this
state of things with a feeling which may fairly be
described as one of choking rage. It was not the cor-
ruption that enraged him, but the subordination of
the royal power. His aim in life, as defined from
childhood, was to overthrow the Whig aristocracy and
make himself a real monarch. There were two sets
of circumstances which seemed to favour his ambition.
In the first place, the disappearance of Jacobitism as
an active political force brought the united Tory party
to the support of the House of Hanover, so that there
was a chance for the king to control a majority in
Parliament. In the second place, the relations between
the foremost political leaders happened to be such as
to enable the king to frame a succession of short-
lived and jarring ministries, thus bringing discredit
upon cabinet government. Under such circumstances
the young man was busily engaged in building up a
party of personal adherents entirely dependent upon
him as dispenser of patronage, when all at once the
American question was thrown upon the stage in a
way that alarmed him greatly.

2N

178 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

For some years past there had been growing up in
England a new party of Whigs very different from
the country squires who so long had ruled the land.
They represented the trades and industries of modern
imperial England, they entertained many democratic -
ideas, and were disposed to be intolerant of ancient
abuses. They saw that the whole body politic was
poisoned by the rotten boroughs, and they knew that
unless this source of corruption could be stopped
there was an end of English freedom. Accordingly,
in-1745 these New Whigs, under the lead of William
Pitt, began the great agitation for Parliamentary Re- —
form which only achieved its first grand triumph with
Earl Grey and Lord John Russell in 1832. When
the Stamp Act was repealed, in 1766, the question
of Parliamentary Reform had been before the public
for twenty-one years, and it largely determined the
character of the speeches and votes upon that memo-
rable occasion. :

The resolutions of Patrick Henry and Samuel
Adams and the New York congress asserted in the
boldest language the principle of “no taxation with-
out representation.” That was one of the watchwords
of the New Whigs, and hence Pitt in urging the
repeal of the Stamp Act adopted the American posi-
tion in full. None could deny that it was a funda-
mental and long-established principle of English
liberty. It had been asserted by Simon de Mont-
fort’s Parliament in 1265; it had been expressly ad-
mitted by Edward I. in 1301; and since then it had
never been directly impugned with success, though
some kings had found ways of partially evading it, as,
for instance, in the practice of benevolences which

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 179

grew up during the Wars of the Roses and was with
difficulty suppressed in the seventeenth century. No
Englishman could stand up and deny the principle of
“no taxation without representation” without incur-
ring the risk of being promptly refuted. Neverthe-
less the unreformed House of Commons had by slow
stages arrived at a point where its very existence was
a living denial of that principle. It was therefore im-
possible to separate the American case from the case
of Parliamentary Reform; the very language in which
the argument for Massachusetts and Virginia was
couched involved also the argument for Birmingham
and Manchester. Hence in the Stamp Act debate
the Old Whigs, who were opposed to Parliamentary
Reform, did not dare to adopt Pitt’s position. That
would have been suicidal; so they were obliged to
urge the repeal of the Stamp Act simply upon grounds
of general expediency.

The Old Whigs were opposed to reform because
they felt that they needed the rotten boroughs in
order to maintain control of Parliament. The king
was opposed to reform for much the same reason.
His schemes were based upon the hope of beating the
Old Whigs at their own game, and securing by fair
means or foul enough rotten boroughs to control Par-
liament for his own purposes. In this policy he had
for a time much success. The reform of Parliament
would be the death-blow to all such schemes. The
king felt that it would be the ruin of all his political
hopes; and this well-grounded fear possessed his half-
crazy mind with all the overmastering force of a
morbid fixed idea. Hence his ferocious hatred of the
elder Pitt, and hence the savage temper in which after

180 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

1766 he thrust himself into American affairs. When
once this desperate political gamester had entered the
field, it was no longer possible for those affairs to be
discussed reasonably or dealt with according to the
merits of the case. In the king’s mind it all reduced
itself to this: on the Stamp Act question the Ameri-
cans had won a victory. That was not to be endured.
Somehow or other a fight must be forced again on
the question of taxation, and the Americans must be
compelled to eat their own words and surrender the
principle in which they had so confidently intrenched
themselves. This was the spirit in which the king
took up the matter, and in it the original question as
to raising a continental revenue for American pur-
poses was quite lost sight of. There is nothing to
show that the king cared a straw for the revenue; to
snub and browbeat the Americans was all in all with
him.

There was a certain kind of vulgar shrewdness in
thus selecting the Americans as chief antagonists, for
should their resistance tend to become rebellious, it
would tend to array public opinion in England against
them as disturbers of the peace, and would thus dis-
credit the principle which they represented. Thus
did this mischief-maker on the throne go to work to
stir up bad feelings between two great branches of the
English race.

Thus after 1766 the story of the causes of the
American Revolution enters upon a new stage. In
the earlier or Grenville stage a great public question
was discussed on grounds of statesmanship, and the
British government, having tried an impracticable
solution, promptly withdrew it. No war need come

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 181

from that situation. But in the second stage we
see a desperate political schemer, to the neglect of
public interests and in defiance of all sound statesman-
ship, pushing on a needless quarrel until it inevitably
ends in war. This second stage we may call the
Townshend-North stage.

It was a curious fortune that provided George III.
with two such advisers as Charles Townshend and
Frederick North. Both were brilliant and frivolous
young men without much political principle; both
were inclined to take public life as an excellent joke.
North lived long enough to find it no joke; Town-
shend stayed upon the scene till he had perpetrated
one colossal piece of mischief, and then died, leaving
North to take the consequences. I do not believe
Lord North would ever have originated such a meas-
ure as the Revenue Act of 1767; there was no malice
in his nature, but in Townshend there was a strong
vein of utterly reckless diablerie. Nobody could have
been more willing to please the king by picking a
quarrel with the Americans, and nobody knew better
how to do it. Townshend was exceptionally well
informed on American affairs, and sinned with his
eyes wide open. In his case it will not do to talk
about the blundering of the British ministers. Gren-
ville had blundered, but Townshend’s ingenuity was
devoted to brushing every American hair the wrong
way. ,

In the debates on the repeal of the Stamp Act the
Americans had been charged with inconsistency in
having allowed Parliament to tax them by means of
port duties, while they refused to allow it to tax them
by means of stamped paper. In reply the friends of

182 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

America had drawn a distinction between external
and zzternal taxes, and had said that the Americans
did not deny Parliament’s right to tax them in the
former case, but only in the latter case. The distinc-
tion was more ingenious than sound, and indeed the
Americans had been guilty of inconsistency. They
had at first tacitly assented to port duties because the
nature of an indirect tax is not so quickly and dis-
tinctly realized as that of a direct tax, and so they
had only gradually come to take in the full situation.
But the acquiescence in port duties had been by no
means unqualified. During all the reign of Charles IT.
the New England colonies had virtually defied the
custom-house; in later times the activity of smugglers
had reduced all tariff acts to a dead letter; and so
lately as 1761 the resistance to general search war-
rants showed what might be expected when any rash
ministry should endeavour to enforce such tariff acts.
In short, it was perfectly clear that if pushed to a
logical statement of their position, the Americans
would deny the authority of Parliament from begin-
ning to end. No one understood this better than
Townshend when he now proceeded to lay a duty
upon certain dried fruits, glass, painter’s colours, paper,
and tea. 3

With this continental revenue he proposed, of course,
to keep up a small army for defending the frontier;
but he also proposed other things. For more than
half a century the various royal governors had tried to
persuade the legislatures to vote them fixed salaries,
but the legislatures, unwilling to give them too loose
a tether, had obstinately refused to do more than make
an annual grant which expired unless renewed by a

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 183

fresh grant. This was still one of the burning ques-
tions of American politics, and Townshend now pro-
posed to settle it offhand by taking it out of the hands
of the legislatures once for all. Henceforth the
governors should be paid by the crown out of the
revenues collected in America, and as if this were not
enough, the judges should be paid in the same way.
If after these expenses there should be any surplus
remaining, it would be used for pensioning eminent
American officials. In plain English it would be used
as a corruption fund. Thus the British ministry
assumed direct control over the internal administration
of the American colonies, including even the courts of
justice; under these circumstances it undertook to
maintain an army, which might be employed against
the people as readily as against Indians; and it actually
had the impudence to demand of the Americans the
money to support it in doing these things! To
all this, said Townshend, with an evil twinkle in his
eye, you Americans can’t object, you know, for your
friends say you are willing to submit to port duties.
Then. by way of an extra good sting he added a clause
prohibiting the New York legislature from assembling
for business of any sort until it should be prepared to
yield to the British ministry in a measure for quar-
tering troops that was intensely unpopular in New
York.

In this way did Townshend gather into a single
parcel all the obnoxious things he could think of, and
hurl them at the heads of the Americans in this so-
called Revenue Act. His own feeling about it was
betrayed in his laughing remark as he went down
with it to the House of Commons, “I suppose I

184 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

shall be dismissed for my pains!” Doubtless he never
could have got it through the House without the aid
of the rotten boroughs, and his victory was one of the
first evil symptoms of the growing power of what we
may call the royal machine. No doubt Townshend
looked forward to some fine sport when once the king
and the Americans were set by the ears; but he had
no sooner carried his measures than sudden death
removed him from the scene, and Lord North took his
place.

There never existed a self-respecting people that
would not have resented and resisted such an outra-
geous measure as this pretended Revenue Act. Yet
there was not much disturbance of the peace in Amer-
ica. All the ordinary machinery of argument and peti-
tion was used tono purpose. The measure of resistance
in which all the colonies united in 1768 was an agree-
ment to cease all commercial intercourse with Great
Britain until the Revenue Act should be repealed.
This agreement was to some extent evaded by traders
more intent upon private gain than public policy, but
on the whole it was remarkably well kept until the war
came. Doubtless it seriously damaged and weakened
the colonies, but it seemed the only kind of peaceful
resistance that could be made.

Smuggling of course went on, and the seizure of
one of John Hancock’s ships for a false entry caused
a riot in Boston in which one of the collector’s boats
was burned. This affair led the king to the dangerous
step of sending troops to Boston, and the sacking of
Hutchinson’s house three years before was quoted to
silence those members of Parliament who opposed this
step. The troops stayed in Boston seventeen months,

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 185

and all that time their mere presence there was in
gross violation of an act of Parliament. Our modern
Tories, who hold up their hands in pious horror at
every infraction of British-made law on the part of
our forefathers, seem quite oblivious of the fact that
according to British law these soldiers were mere
trespassers in Boston. Their only legal abode was
the Castle, on a small island in the harbour. They
were kept in town under pretext of preserving order,
but really to aid in enforcing the Revenue Act. That
after seventeen months a slight scrimmage should have
occurred, with the loss of half a dozen lives, was rather
less than might have been expected. Next day the
town-meeting ordered Hutchinson, who was then lieu-
tenant-governor acting as governor, to remove all sol-
diery to the Castle, and Hutchinson promptly obeyed ;
he knew perfectly well that the law was on the side
of the townspeople. I can imagine how that great
Tory lawyer would have smiled at modern accounts
of the King Street affray, in which a crowd of ruffians
are depicted as wantonly assaulting the military guar-
dians of law and order. Undoubtedly it was an affair
of a mob; but it was such a scrimmage as indicated
no special criminality on the part of either soldiers or
citizens, and thus was a very different sort of thing
from the wicked destruction of Hutchinson’s house.
I may add that the perfectly calm and honourable
way in which the affair was handled by the courts is
a sufficient comment upon the ludicrous notion that
Boston was a disorderly town requiring an armed
soldiery to keep the peace.

The sacking of Hutchinson’s house, I say, and the
chance affray on King Street were both cases of

b
186 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

mob law, yet it is only very loose thinking that would
attempt to liken one case to the other. Our fore-
fathers knew the difference: the Hutchinson male-
factors they cast into jail, but the memory of the
King Street victims they kept green for many a year
by an annual oration in the Old South Meeting
House, on the baleful effects of quartering soldiers
among peaceful citizens in time of peace. We are
now ready to consider the Tea Party, which by no
stretch of definition can properly be included among
cases of mob law. We are at length prepared to see
just what the Tea Party was.

Early in 1770 Lord North made up his mind that
the Revenue Act could not be enforced, and was a
source of needless irritation, and he proposed to repeal
it. But a full repeal would put things back where
they were after the repeal of the Stamp Act, and even
worse, for it would be a second victory for the Amer-
icans. The king could not afford to put such a
weapon into the hands of the New Whigs; so it was
decided to retain the duty on tea alone. In Parlia-
ment, certain Whigs objected that it would avail
nothing to repeal the other duties, if that on tea were
kept, since it was not revenue but principle that was
at stake. Bless their simple hearts, the king knew
all about that, and he kept the duty-on tea, simply in
order to force another fight on the question of prin-
ciple. It was a question on which he was growing
more and more fanatical, and nothing could prevail
upon him to let it alone.

So for the next three years tea was the symbol
with which the hostile spirits conjured. It stood for
everything that true freemen loathe. In the deadly

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 187

tea-chest lurked the complete surrender of self-gov-
ernment, the payment of governors and judges by the
crown, the arbitrary suppression of legislatures, the
denial of the principle that freemen can be taxed
only by their own representatives. So long as they
were threatened with tea, the colonists would not
break the non-intercourse agreement. Once the mer-
chants of New York undertook to order from Eng-
land various other articles than tea, and the news
was greeted all over the country with such fury that
nothing more of the sort was attempted openly. As
for tea itself shipped from England, one would as soon
have thought of trying to introduce the Black Death.

In the summer of 1772 the king tried to enforce
the order that judges’ salaries should be paid from
the royal treasury. He was getting no revenue from
America, but he would pay them out of the British
revenues. He began with Massachusetts, and at
once there was fierce excitement, which reverberated
through all the colonies. The judges were forbidden
under penalty of impeachment to touch the king’s
money, and so another year passed by and left
George III. still baffled.

It was then that he hit upon his famous device for
“trying the question” with America. This “trying
the question” was his own phrase. It was observed
that the Americans had more or less of tea to drink,
though not an ounce was brought from England;
whenever they solaced their nerves with the belliger-
ent beverage, they smuggled it from Holland or the
Dutch East Indies. The king, therefore, neatly
arranged matters with the East India Company, so
that it could afford to offer tea in American ports at

188 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

a price far below its market value; this tea, with the
duty upon it, would cost American customers less
than the tea smuggled from Holland, and in this way
the Americans were to be ensnared into surrendering
the great principle at issue.

Under these circumstances the sending of the East
India Company’s tea-ships to America was in no sense
an incident of commerce. The king’s arrangement
with the Company deprived it of its commercial char-
acter. It was simply a political challenge. As Lord
North openly confessed in the House of Commons,
it was merely the king’s method of “trying the ques-
tion” with America. It was, moreover, an extremely
insulting challenge. A grosser insult to any self-re-
specting people can hardly be imagined. It was King
George’s way of asking that perennial Boss Tweed
question, “ What are you going to do about it?” It
was the most far-reaching political question that was
raised in that age, for it involved the whole case of the
relations of an imperial government to its colonies; a
solemn question to be settled not by mobs, but by the
sober and deliberate sense of the American people,
and it was thus that it was settled in Boston once and
forever.

Circumstances made Boston the battle-ground, and
gave added point and concentrated meaning to every-
thing that was done there. The royal challenge was
aimed at the colonies as a whole, and ships were sent
to New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as well as
to Boston. In all four towns consignees were ap-
pointed to receive the tea and dispose of it after pay-
ing the duty. But in the three former towns the
consignees quailed before the wrath of the people,

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 189

resigned their commissions, and took oath that they
would not act in the matter. So when the tea-ships
at length arrived at New York and Philadelphia, they
were turned about and sent home without ever coming
within the jurisdiction of the custom-house. At Charles-
ton the ships lingered more than the legal term of
twenty days in port, and then the collector seized the
tea and brought it ashore; but as there was no con-
signee at hand to pay the duty, the fragrant leaves lay
untouched in the custom-house until they rotted and
fell to pieces. But before these things happened, the bat-
tle had been fought in Boston. There the consignees,
two of whom were sons of Governor Hutchinson, re-
fused to resign; on no account, therefore, would it do
to let the tea come ashore at Boston, for if it did, the
duty would instantly be paid. The governor was a man
of intense legality; he did not approve the sending of
the tea, but if a ship once came into port, it must not,
in his opinion, go out again without discharging all
due formalities. His sons were like him for stubborn
courage, and thus it was that Boston became the seat
of war. With those two redoubtable Puritans, Thomas
Hutchinson and Samuel Adams, pitted against each
other, it was a meeting of Greek with Greek, and one
might be sure that something dramatic and incisive
would come of it.

In those stormy days the governor so often turned
his legislature out of doors that it may be said to have
been in a chronic state of dissolution. In order to
transact public business on a large scale, the town-
meetings appointed committees of correspondence,
whereby town might confer with town and the sense
of the whole commonwealth be thus ascertained. This

190 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

system, set in operation by Samuel Adams in 1772,
was one of the strongest among the organizing forces
that brought into existence the Federal Union. But
my point now is that the action of these committees of
correspondence expressed the deliberate sense of the
commonwealth as truly as any act of legislature could
have expressed it.

There is something eloquent and touching in the
stained and yellow records of those old town-meetings.
When it was known that the ships were coming, Bos-
ton asked advice of all the other towns. “ Brethren,
we are reduced to this dilemma, either to sit down
quiet under this and every other burden that our ene-
mies shall see fit to lay upon us, or to rise up and re-
sist this and every plan laid for our destruction, as
becomes wise freemen. In this extremity we earnestly
request your advice.”

Some of the replies from the mountain villages are
worth recording. The farmers of Lenox said, “ As we
are in a remote wilderness corner of the earth, we
know but little; but neither nature nor the God of
nature requireth us to crouch, Issachar-like, between
the two burdens of poverty and slavery.” The farm-
ers of Petersham were concerned to think of the risk
that Boston was assuming, exposed as she was to the
fire of a British fleet. “The time may come,” they
said, “when you may be driven from your goodly heri-
tage; if that should be the case, we invite you to
share with us in our small supplies of the necessaries
of life, and should we still not be able to withstand,
we are determined to retire and seek repose amongst
the inland aboriginal natives, with whom we doubt
not but to find more humanity and brotherly love than

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY IgI

we have lately received from our mother country.”
The Boston committee replied, “We join with the
town of Petersham in preferring a life among savages
to the most splendid condition of slavery; but Heaven
will bless the united efforts of a brave people.”

From every town in Massachusetts came instruc-
tions that on no account whatever must the tea be
allowed to come ashore. Similar advice came in from
the other colonies. The action of the Boston con-
signees in refusing to resign had fixed the eyes of the
whole country upon that town. It was rightly felt
that the weal or woe of America depended upon the
action of the people there. If through any weakness
of Boston a single ounce of tea should be landed,
there was a widespread feeling that the chief bond of
union between the colonies would be snapped. Hence
the cordial letter from Philadelphia said: “ Our only
fear is that you may shrink. May God give you vir-
tue enough to save the liberties of your country.”
The advice that thus came from all quarters was abso-
lutely unanimous. When the tea-ships arrived late in
November in Boston harbour, they were taken in charge
by the committees of Boston, Cambridge, Charles-
town, Roxbury, and Dorchester, and a military guard
was placed over them. From that time forth until the
end not a step was taken save under the direction of
these five committees, to whose action a consistent
unity was given by the prudent leadership of Samuel
Adams, while in all that they did they felt that in the
sight of the whole country they were discharging a
sacred duty. Truly for an instance of mob law this
Tea Party was somewhat conscientiously and prayer-
fully prepared !

192 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

There were just twenty days in which to try all
legal measures for sending away the ships without
landing the tea, but legal measures failed because one
side was as stubborn as the other. After the ships
had once come above the Castle, they could not go out
again without the regular clearance from the collector
of the port, or else a special pass from the governor.
But the collector manceuvred and wore away the time
without granting a clearance. For nineteen days and
nights the people’s guard patrolled the wharves, senti-
nels watched from the church belfries, the tar barrels
on Beacon Hill were kept ready for lighting, and
any attempt at landing the tea forcibly would have
been met by an instant uprising of the neighbouring
counties. So things went till Thursday, December 16,
the last of the twenty days. The morning was a
drizzling rain, but in the afternoon it cleared off bright
and crisp and frosty, while all day in the Old South
Church a town-meeting was busy with momentous
issues. After midnight nothing but a personal assault
could prevent the collector from seizing the tea and
bringing it ashore, and nothing but personal violence
could prevent one or both the young Hutchinsons
from paying the duty. There was but one peaceful
avenue of escape from the situation. The governor
could grant a pass which would enable the ships to go
out without a clearance. Would he do so? Samuel
Adams knew him too well to expect it. Francis .
Rotch, the owner of the principal ship, was sent out to
the governor’s country house on Milton Hill, to ask
for a pass. While his return was awaited a gentleman
highly esteemed, already wasted with the disease that
was soon to end his days, addressed the assembly.

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 193

He reminded them of the probable consequences of
what might be done that day — nothing less than war
against the whole power of Great Britain —and
begged them to act with such consequences fully in
view. After this touching word of caution from
Josiah Quincy, a final vote was taken. Suppose the
governor should refuse, might the tea on any account
whatever be suffered to land? One cannot step into
the venerable church to-day without hearing its rafters
ring with that sturdy unanimous “No!” How the
vote was to be carried into effect few people knew, but
Samuel Adams knew, and so did Dr. Joseph Warren
and others who had counselled together in a back
room in Edes and Gill’s printing-office on the corner
of Court and Brattle streets. There was a Boston
merchant who evidently knew what was intended. It
had grown dark and the great church was dimly
lighted with candles when this gentleman got up and
asked, “ Mr. Moderator, did any one ever think how
tea would mix with salt water?” and there was a
shout of applause. At length the governor's refusal
came, and never did such silence settle down over an
assembly as when Adams arose and exclaimed, “ This
meeting can do nothing more to save the country!”
The response to this solemn watchword was the war-
whoop from outside, and those strange Indian figures
passing by in the moonlight. Was there ever such a
riot as that which followed, when those thronging
thousands upon the wharves stood with bated breath,
while the busy click of hatchets came from the ships
and from moment to moment a broken chest was
hoisted upon the bulwark and its fragrant contents
emptied into the icy waters? Things happened there,

20 \

194 THE DEEPER SIGNIFICANCE

the like of which, I dare say, were never recorded in
the history of riots. So punctilious were those Ind-
ians that when one of them by accident broke a pad-
lock belonging to one of the ship’s officers, he bought
a new padlock the next morning and made good the
loss.

Who were these Indians? Admiral Montagu and
other British gentlemen, who with him beheld the pro-
ceedings, saw fit to declare that they “ were not a dis-
orderly rabble, but men of sense, coolness, and
intrepidity.” Paul Revere was among them, and, in
all probability, Dr. Warren was one. George Robert
Twelves Hawes, one of the last survivors, died in
1835, at the age of ninety-eight. He used to tell how,
while he was busily ripping open a chest, the man
next to him raised his hatchet so high that the Indian
blanket fell away from his arm and disclosed the well-
known crimson velvet sleeve and point-lace ruffles of
John Hancock!

Can anybody really discover in these proceedings
anything that justifies a comparison with the furious
pro-slavery mob that threatened Garrison’s life? The
writer who made that strange comparison seems to
have been thinking of the fact that, in both cases,
well-dressed persons were concerned. I suppose
Hancock’s velvet sleeve may be responsible for the
droll analogy. It seems to me eminently fitting that
the hand which subscribed so handsomely the Decla-
ration of Independence should have taken part in the
decisive defiance that brought on the war. We are
told that the destruction of the tea was “illegal”; so
was the Declaration of Independence. Each rested
upon the paramount right of self-preservation, and the

OF THE BOSTON TEA PARTY 195

former was no more’ the act of a mob than the latter.
It was the deliberate and coolly reasoned act of the
people of Massachusetts, cordially approved and
stoutly defended by the people of the thirteen colo-
nies. The contemporary British historian Gordon
saw clearly that the crisis was one in which no com-
promise was possible, and the only alternative, the
surrender of Boston, would have imperilled the whole
future of America. As Dr. Ramsay said, you could
not condemn the Tea Party without condemning the
Revolution altogether, for in no other way could the
men of Boston discharge the duty which they owed
to the country. But a more fitting comment will
never be uttered than that of the enthusiastic John
Adams, the day after the event: “This is the most
magnificent movement of all. There is a dignity, a
majesty, a sublimity, in this last effort of the patriots,
that I greatly admire.... This destruction of the
tea . . . must have so important consequences and so
lasting, that I cannot but consider it an epoch in
history.”

Yes, this is the true judgment. If there is any-
thing in human life that is dignified and grand, it is
the self-restraint of masses of men under extreme
provocation, and the steady guidance of their actions
by the light of sober reason; and from this point of
view the Boston Tea Party will always remain a typi-
cal instance of what is majestic and sublime.

VI

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

VI
REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

THE recent publication of an admirable memoir of
Huxley, by his son Leonard,’ has awakened in me old
memories of some of the pleasantest scenes I have
ever known. The book is written in a spirit of charm-
ing frankness, and is thickly crowded with details not
one of which could well be spared. A notable feature
is the copiousness of the extracts from familiar letters,
in which everything is faithfully reproduced, even to
the genial nonsense that abounds, or the big, big D
that sometimes, though rarely, adds its pungent flavour.
Huxley was above all things a man absolutely simple
and natural; he never posed, was never starched, or
prim, or on his good behaviour ; and he was nothing if
not playful. A biography that brings him before us,
robust and lifelike on every page, as this book does, is
surely a model biography. A brief article, like the
present, cannot even attempt to do justice to it, but I
am moved to jot down some of the reminiscences and
reflections which it has awakened.

My first introduction to the fact of Huxley’s exist-
ence was in February, 1861, when I was a sophomore
at Harvard. The second serial number of Herbert
Spencer’s “ First Principles,” which had just arrived
from London, and on which I was feasting my soul,

1 “Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley.” By his son, Leonard
Huxley. In two volumes. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1goo.

199

200 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

contained an interesting reference to Huxley’s views
concerning a “pre-geologic past of unknown dura-
tion.” In the next serial number a footnote informed
the reader that the phrase “ persistence of force,” since
become so famous, was suggested by Huxley, as avoid-
ing an objection which Spencer had raised to the
current expression “conservation of force.” Further
references to Huxley, as also to Tyndall, in the course
of the book, left me with a vague conception of the
three friends as, after a certain fashion, partners in the
business of scientific research and generalization.

Some such vague conception was developed in the
mind of the general public into divers droll miscon-
ceptions. Even as Spencer’s famous phrase, “survi-
val of the fittest,” which he suggested as preferable
to “natural selection,” is by many people ascribed to
Darwin, so we used to hear wrathful allusions to
“Huxley’s Belfast Address,” and similar absurdities.
The climax was reached in 1876, when Huxley and
his wife made a short visit to the United States.
Early in that year Tyndall had married a daughter of
Lord Claud Hamilton, brother of the Duke of Aber-
corn, and one fine morning in August we were gravely
informed by the newspapers that “ Huxley and his
titled bride” had just arrived in New York. For our
visitors, who had left at home in London seven goodly
children, some of them approaching maturity, this item
of news was a source of much merriment.

To return to my story, it was not long before my
notion of Huxley came to be that of a very sharply
defined and powerful individuality; for such he ap-
peared in his “ Lectures on the Origin of Species” and
in his “ Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature,” both

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 201

published in 1863. Not long afterward, in reading
the lay sermon on “ The Advisableness of Improving
Natural Knowledge,” I felt that here was a poetic soul
whom one could not help loving. In those days I fell
in with Youmans, who had come back from England
bubbling and brimming over with racy anecdotes
about the philosophers and men of science. Of course
the Soapy Sam incident was not forgotten, and You-
mans’ version of it, which was purely from hearsay,
could make no pretension to verbal accuracy; never-
theless it may be worth citing. Mr. Leonard Huxley
‘has-carefully compared several versions from eye and
ear witnesses, together with his father’s own com-
ments, and I do not know where one could find a more
‘striking illustration of the difficulty of attaining absolute
accuracy in writing even contemporary history.

As I heard the anecdote from Youmans: It was at
the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in
1860, soon after the publication of Darwin’s epoch-
making book, and while people in general were wag-
ging their heads at it, that the subject came up for
discussion before a fashionable and hostile audience.
Samuel Wilberforce, the plausible and self-complacent
Bishop of Oxford, commonly known as “ Soapy Sam,”
launched out in a rash speech, conspicuous for its
ignorant misstatements, and highly seasoned with ap-
peals to the prejudices of the audience, upon whose
lack of intelligence the speaker relied. Near him sat
Huxley, already eminent as a man of science, and
known to look favourably upon Darwinism, but more
or less youthful withal, only five-and-thirty, so that the
bishop anticipated sport in badgering him. At the
close of his speech he suddenly turned upon Huxley

202 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

and begged to be informed if the learned gentleman
was really willing to be regarded as the descendant of
amonkey. Eager self-confidence had blinded the
bishop to the tactical blunder in thus coarsely inviting
a retort. Huxley was instantly upon his feet witha
speech demolishing the bishop’s card house of mis-
takes; and at the close he observed that since a
question of personal preferences had been very im-
properly brought into the discussion of a scientific
theory, he felt free to confess that if the alternatives
were descent, on the one hand, from a respectable
monkey, or on the other from a bishop of the English
Church who could stoop to such misrepresentations
and sophisms as the audience had lately listened to, he
should declare in favour of the monkey!

Now this was surely not what Huxley said, nor how
he said it. His own account is that, at Soapy Sam’s
insolent taunt, he simply whispered to his neighbour,
Sir Benjamin Brodie, “The Lord hath delivered him into
my hands!” a remark which that excellent old gentle-
man received with a stolid stare. Huxley sat quiet un-
til the chairman called him up. His concluding retort
seems to have been most carefully reported by John
Richard Green, then a student at Oxford, in a letter to
his friend, Boyd Dawkins: “I asserted — and I repeat
— that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having
an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor
whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather
be a man —a man of restless and versatile intellect
—who, not content with an equivocal success in his
own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions
with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure
them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 203

of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent
digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.”
This can hardly be accurate; no electric effect could
have been wrought by so long-winded a sentiment. I
agree with a writer in Macmzllan’s Magazine that this
version is “much too Green,” but it doubtless gives
the purport of what Huxley probably said in half as
many but far more picturesque and fitting words. I
have a feeling that the electric effect is best preserved
in the Youmans version, in spite of its manifest verbal
inaccuracy. It is curious to read that in the ensuing
buzz of excitement a lady fainted, and had to be car-
ried from the room; but the audience were in general
quite alive to the bishop’s blunder in manners and tac-
tics, and, with the genuine English love of fair play,
they loudly applauded Huxley. From that time forth
it was recognized that he was not the sort of man to be
browbeaten. As for Bishop Wilberforce, he carried
with him from the affray no bitterness, but was always
afterward most courteous to his castigator.

When Huxley had his scrimmage with Congreve, in
1869, over the scientific aspects of Positivism, I was
giving lectures to postgraduate classes at Harvard on
the Positive Philosophy. I never had any liking for
Comte or his ideas, but entertained an absurd notion
that the epithet “ Positive” was a proper and conven-
ient one to apply to scientific methods and scientific
philosophy in general. In the course of the discussion
I attacked sundry statements of Huxley with quite un-
necessary warmth, for such is the superfluous belliger-
ency of youth. The Word reported my lectures in
full, insomuch that each one filled six or seven columns,
and the editor, Manton Marble, sent copies regularly

204 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

to Huxley and others. Four years afterward I went
to London, to spend some time there in finishing
“Cosmic Philosophy” and getting it through the
press. I had corresponded with Spencer for several
years, and soon after my arrival he gave one of his
exquisite little dinners at his own lodgings. Spen-
cer’s omniscience extended to the kitchen, and as
composer of a menu neither Caréme nor Francatelli
could have surpassed him. The other guests were
Huxley, Tyndall, Lewes, and Hughlings Jackson.
Huxley took but little notice of me, and I fancied that
something in those lectures must have offended him.
But two or three weeks later Spencer took me to the
dinner at the X Club, all the members of which were
present except Lubbock. When the coffee was served
Huxley brought his chair around to my side, and
talked with me the rest of the evening. My impression
was that he was the cosiest man I had ever met. He
ended by inviting me to his house for the next Sunday
at six, for what he called “tall tea.”

This was the introduction to a series of experiences
so delightful that, if one could only repeat them, the
living over again all the bad quarters of an hour in
one’s lifetime would not be too high a price to pay.
I was already at home in several London households,
but nowhere was anything so sweet as the cordial wel-
come in that cosey drawing-room on Marlborough Place,
where the great naturalist became simply “ Pater” (pro-
nounced Pater), to be pulled about and tousled and
kissed by those lovely children; nor could anything
so warm the heart of an exile (if so melancholy a term
can properly be applied to anybody sojourning in be-
loved London) as to have the little seven-year-old miss

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 205

climb into one’s lap and ask for fairy tales, whereof I
luckily had an ample repertoire. Nothing could be
found more truly hospitable than the long dinner table,
where our beaming host used to explain, “ Because this
is called a tea is no reason why a man shouldn’t pledge
his friend in a stoup of Rhenish, or even in a noggin of
Glenlivet, if he has a mind to.” At the end of our
first evening I was told that a plate would be set for
me every Sunday, and I must never fail to come.
After two or three Sundays, however, I began to feel
afraid of presuming too much upon the cordiality of
these new friends, and so, by a superhuman effort of
self-control, and at the cost of unspeakable wretched-
ness, I stayed away. For this truancy I was promptly
called to account, a shamefaced confession was ex-
torted, and penalties, vague but dire, were denounced
in case of a second offence; so I never missed another
Sunday evening till the time came for leaving London.

Part of the evening used to be spent in the little
overcrowded library, before a blazing fire, while we
discussed all manner of themes, scientific or poetical,
practical or philosophical, religious or zsthetic. Hux-
ley, like a true epicure,smoked the sweet little brierwood
pipe, but he seemed to take especial satisfaction in
seeing me smoke very large full-flavoured Havanas from
a box which some Yankee admirer had sent him.
Whatever subject came uppermost in our talk, I was
always impressed with the fulness and accuracy of his
information and the keenness of his judgments; but
that is, of course, what any appreciative reader can
gather from his writings. Unlike Spencer, he was an
omnivorous reader. Of historical and literary know-
ledge, such as one usually gets from books, Spencer

206 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

had a great deal, and of an accurate and well-digested
sort; he had some incomprehensible way of absorbing
it through the pores of the skin, —at least, he never
seemed to read books. Huxley, on the other hand,
seemed to read everything worth reading, — history,
politics, metaphysics, poetry, novels, even books of
science; for perhaps it may not be superfluous to
point out to the general world of readers that no great
man of science owes his scientific knowledge to books,
Huxley’s colossal knowledge of the animal kingdom
was not based upon the study of Cuvier, Baer, and
other predecessors, but upon direct personal examina-
tion of thousands of organisms, living and extinct.
He cherished a wholesome contempt for mere book-
ishness in matters of. science, and carried on war to
the knife against the stupid methods of education in
vogue forty years ago, when students were expected
to learn something of chemistry or palzeontology by
reading about black oxide of manganese or the denti-
tion of anoplotherium. A rash clergyman once, with-
out further equipment in natural history than some
desultory reading, attacked the Darwinian theory in
some sundry magazine articles, in which he made him-
self uncommonly merry at Huxley’s expense. This
was intended to draw the great man’s fire; and as
the batteries remained silent the author proceeded to
write to Huxley, calling his attention to the articles,
and at the same time, with mock modesty, asking ad-
vice as to the further study of these deep questions.
Huxley’s answer was brief and to the point, “ Take a
cockroach and dissect it!”

Too exclusive devotion, however, to scalpel and
microscope may leave a man of science narrow and

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 207

one-sided, dead to some of the most interesting as-
pects of human life. But Huxley was keenly alive in
all directions, and would have enjoyed mastering all
branches of knowledge, if the days had only been long
enough. He found rest and recreation in change of
themes, and after a long day’s scientific work at South
Kensington would read Sybel’s “ French Revolution,”
or Lange’s “ History of Materialism,” or the last new
novel, until the witching hour of midnight. This
reading was in various languages. Without a uni-
versity education,, Huxley had a remarkably good
knowledge of Latin. He was fond of Spinoza, and
every once in a while, in the course of our chats, he
would exclaim: “Come, now, let’s see what old Bene-
dict has to say about it! There’s no better man.”
Then he would take the book from its shelf, and
while we both looked on the page he would give
voice to his own comments in a broad and liberal
paraphrase, that showed his sound and scholarlike ap-
preciation of every point in the Latin text. A spirited
and racy version it would have been, had he ever
undertaken to translate Spinoza. So I remember
saying once, but he replied, “We must leave it for
young Fred Pollock, whom I think you have seen;
he is shy and doesn’t say much, but I can tell
you, whatever he does is sure to be amazingly
good.” They who are familiar with Sir Frederick
Pollock’s noble book on Spinoza, to say nothing
of his other works, will recognize the truth of the
prophecy:

Huxley had also a mastery of French, Italian, and
German, and perhaps of some other modern lan-
guages. Angelo Heilprin says that he found him

208 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

studying Russian, chiefly in order to acquire a thor-
ough familiarity with the work of the great anatomist,
Kovalevsky. How far he may have carried that study
I know not; but his son tells us that it was also in mid-
dle life that he began Greek, in order to read, at first
hand, Aristotle and the New Testament. To read
Aristotle with critical discernment requires an ex-
tremely good knowledge of Greek; and if Huxley
got so far as that, we need not be surprised at hear-
ing that he could enjoy the Homeric poems in the
original.

I suppose there were few topics in the heavens or
on earth that did not get overhauled at that little
library fireside. At one time it would be politics,
and my friend would thank God that, whatever mis-
takes he might have made in life, he had never bowed
the knee to either of those intolerable humbugs,
Louis Napoleon or Benjamin Disraeli. Without
admitting that the shifty Jew deserved to be placed
on quite so low a plane as Hortense Beauharnais’s
feeble son, we can easily see how distasteful he would
be to a man of Huxley’s earnest and whole-souled
directness. But antipathy to Disraeli did not in this
case mean fondness for Gladstone. In later years,
when Huxley was having his great controversy with
Gladstone, we find him writing: “Seriously, it is to
me a great thing that the destinies of this country
should at present be seriously influenced by a man —
who, whatever he may be in the affairs of which I am
no judge, is nothing but a copious shuffler in those
which I do understand.” In 1773 there occurred a
brief passage at arms between Gladstone and Herbert
Spencer, in which the great statesman’s intellect

L,

ails ee i a)

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 209

looked amusingly small and commonplace in contrast
with the giant mind of the philosopher. The defeated
party was left with no resources except rhetorical arti-
fice to cover his retreat, and his general aspect was
foxy, not to say Jesuitical. At least so Huxley de-
clared, and I thoroughly agreed with him. Yet
surely it would be a very inadequate and unjust esti-
mate of Gladstone, which should set him down as a
shuffler, and there leave the matter. From the states-
man’s point of view it might be contended that Glad-
stone was exceptionally direct and frank. But a
statesman is seldom, if ever, called upon to ascertain
and exhibit the fundamental facts of a case without
bias and in the disinterested mood which Science de-
mands of her votaries. The statesman’s business is
to accomplish sundry concrete political purposes, and
he measures statements primarily, not by their truth,
but by their availableness as means toward a practi-
cal end. Pure science cultivates a widely different
habit of mind. One could no more expect a prime
minister, as such, to understand Huxley’s attitude in
presence of a scientific problem, than a deaf-mute to
comprehend a symphony of Beethoven. Gladstone’s
aim was to score a point against his adversary, at
whatever cost, whereas Huxley was as quick to detect
his own mistakes as anybody else’s; and such differ-
ences in temperament were scarcely compatible with
mutual understanding.

If absolute loyalty to truth, involving complete self-
abnegation in face of the evidence, be the ideal aim of
the scientific inquirer, there have been few men in
whom that ideal has been so perfectly realized as in
Huxley. If ever he were tempted by some fancied

2P

210 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

charm of speculation to swerve a hair’s breadth from
the strict line of fact, the temptation was promptly
slaughtered and made no sign. For intellectual in-
tegrity, he was a spotless Sir Galahad. I believe ‘
there was nothing in life which he dreaded so much,
as the sin of allowing his reason to be hoodwinked by
personal predilections, or whatever Francis Bacon
would have called “idols of the cave.” Closely con-
nected with this ever present feeling was a holy hor-
ror of a przorz convictions of logical necessity, and of
long festoons of deductive argument suspended from
such airy supports. The prime necessity for him was
to appeal at every step to observation and experiment,
and in the absence of such verification, to rest content
with saying, “I do not know.” It is to Huxley, I
believe, that we owe the epithet “Agnostic,” for
which all men of scientific proclivities owe him a debt
of gratitude, since it- happened to please the popular
fancy and at once supplanted the label “ Positivist ”
which used to be ruthlessly pasted upon all such men,
in spite of their protests and struggles. No better
word than “Agnostic” could be found to express
Huxley’s mental temperament, but with anything like
a formulated system of agnosticism he had little more
to do than with other “isms.” He used to smile at
the formidable parade which Lewes was making with
his “ Objective Method and Verification,” in which cap-
ital letters did duty for part of the argument; and
as for Dean Mansel’s elaborate agnosticism, in his
“Limits of Religious Thought,” Huxley, taking a hint
from Hogarth, used to liken him to a (theological) inn-
keeper who has climbed upon the sign-board of the
rival (scientific) inn, and is busily sawing it off, quite

SE

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 211

oblivious of the grewsome fact that he is sitting upon
the unsupported end! But while he thus set little
store by current agnostic metaphysics, Huxley’s in-
tellectual climate, if I may so speak, was one of per-
fect agnosticism. In intimate converse with him, he
always seemed to me a thoroughgoing and splendid
representation of Hume; indeed, in his writings he
somewhere lets fall a remark expressing a higher re-
gard for Hume than for Kant. It was at this point
that we used to part company in our talks: so long
as it was a question of Berkeley we were substantially
agreed, but when it came to Hume we agreed to
differ.

It is this complete agnosticism of temperament,
added to his abiding dread of intellectual dishonesty,
that explains Huxley’s attitude toward belief in a fu-
ture life. He was not a materialist; nobody saw more
clearly than he the philosophic flimsiness of mate-
rialism, and he looked with strong disapproval upon
the self-complacent negations of Ludwig Buechner.
Nevertheless, with regard to the belief in an immortal
soul, his position was avowedly agnostic, with perhaps
just the slightest possible tacit though reluctant lean-
ing toward the negative. This slight bias was appar-
ently due to two causes. First, it is practically beyond
the power of science to adduce evidence in support of
the soul’s survival of the body, since the whole question
lies beyond the bounds of our terrestrial experience.
Huxley was the last man to assume that the possibili-
ties of nature are limited by our experience, and I think
he would have seen the force of the argument that, in

questions where evidence is in the nature of the case

inaccessible, our inability to produce it does not afford

ZED REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

even the slightest przma facze ground for a negative
verdict... Nevertheless, he seems to have felt as if the
absence of evidence did afford some such prima facze
ground; for in a letter to Charles Kingsley, written in
1860, soon after the sudden death of his first child, he
says: “Had I lived a couple of centuries earlier, I
could have fancied a devil scoffing at me . . . and ask-
ing me what profit it was to have stripped myself of
the hopes and consolations of the mass of mankind.
To which my only reply was, and is, O devil! truth is
better than much profit. I have searched over the
grounds of my belief, and if wife and child and name
and fame were all to be lost to me one after the other,
as the penalty, still I will not lie.” This striking
declaration shows that the second cause of the bias
was the dread of self-deception. It was a noble exhi-
bition of intellectual honesty raised to a truly Puritanic
fervour of self-abnegation. Just because life is sweet,
and the love of it well-nigh irrepressible, must all such
feelings be suspected as tempters, and frowned out of
our temple of philosophy? Rather than run any risk
of accepting a belief because it is pleasant, let us incur
whatever chance there may be of error in the opposite
direction ; thus we shall at least avoid the one unpar-
donable sin. Such, I think, was the shape which the
case assumed in Huxley’s mind. To me it takes a
very different shape; but I cannot help feeling that
mankind is going to be helped by such stanch intel-
lectual integrity as his far more than it is going to be
helped by consoling doctrines of whatever sort; and
therefore his noble self-abnegation, even though it may

1 T have explained this point at some length in the “Unseen World,”
Pp- 43-53-

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 213

have been greater than was called for, is worthy of
most profound and solemn homage.

But we did not spend the whole of the evening in
the little library. Brierwood and Havana at length
gave out, and the drawing-room had its claims upon us.
There was a fondness for music in the family, and it
was no unusual thing for us to gather around the piano
and sing psalms, after which there would perhaps be a
Beethoven sonata, or one of Chopin’s nocturnes, or
perhaps a song. I can never forget the rich contralto
voice of one bright and charming daughter, since
passed away, or the refrain of an old-fashioned song
which she sometimes sang about “ My love, that loved
me long ago.” From music it was an easy transition
to scraps of Browning or Goethe, leading to various
disquisition. Of mirth and badinage there was always
plenty. I dare say there was not another room in
London where so much exuberant nonsense might have
been heard. It is no uncommon thing for masters of
the Queen’s English to delight in torturing it, and
Huxley enjoyed that sort of pastime as much as James
Russell Lowell. “Smole” and “declone” were speci-
mens of the preterites that used to fall from his lips;
and as for puns, the air was blue with them. I cannot
recall one of them now, but the following example,
from a letter of 1855 inviting Hooker to his wedding,
will suffice to show the quality: “I terminate my
Baccalaureate and take my degree of M. A. trimony
(isn’t that atrocious ?) on Saturday, July 21.”

One evening the conversation happened to touch
upon the memorable murder of Dr. Parkman by Dr.
Webster, and I expressed some surprise that an expert
chemist, like Webster, should have been so slow in

214 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

getting his victim’s remains out of the way. “ Well,”
quoth Huxley, “there’s a good deal of substance in a
human body. It isn’t easy to dispose of so,much
corpus delictt,—a reflection which has frequently
deterred me when on the point of killing somebody.”
At such remarks a soft ripple of laughter would run
about the room, with murmurs of “Oh, Pater!” It
was just the same in his lectures to his students. In
the simple old experiment illustrating reflex action, a
frog, whose brain had been removed, was touched upon
the right side of the back with a slightly irritating acid,
and would forthwith reach up with his right hind leg
and rub the place. The next thing in order was to tie
the right leg, whereupon the left leg would come up,
and by dint of strenuous effort reach the itching spot.
One day the stretching was so violent as to result in
a particularly elaborate and comical somersault on the
part of the frog, whereupon Huxley exclaimed, “ You
see, it doesn’t require much of a brain to be an acrobat!”
In an examination on anatomy a very callow lad got
the valves of the heart wrong, putting the mitral on
the right side; but Huxley took compassion on him,
with the remark, “ Poor little beggar! I never got
them correctly myself until I reflected that a bishop
was never in the right!” On another occasion, at the
end of a lecture, he asked one of the students if he
understood it all. The student replied, ‘“ All, sir, but
one part, during which you stood between me and the
blackboard.” “Ah,” rejoined Huxley, “I did my best
to make myself clear, but could not make myself
transparent!” ?

1 | have here eked out my own reminiscences by instances cited from
Leonard Huxley’s book.

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 215

Probably the most tedious bore on earth is the man
who feels it incumbent on him always to be facetious
and to turn everything into a joke. Lynch law is
about the right sort of thing for such persons. Hux-
ley had nothing in common with them. His drollery
was the spontaneous bubbling over of the seething
fountains of energy. The world’s strongest spirits,
from Shakespeare down, have been noted for playful-
ness. The prim and sober creatures who know neither
how to poke fun nor to take it are apt to be the per-
sons who are ridden by their work, — useful mortals
after their fashion, mayhap, but not interesting or stimu-
lating. Huxley’s playfulness lightened the burden of
life for himself and for all with whom he came in con-
tact. I seem to see him now, looking up from his end
of the table, —for my place was usually at Mrs. Hux-
ley’s end, — his dark eyes kindling under their shaggy
brows, and a smile of indescribable beauty spreading
over the swarthy face, as prelude to some keen and
pithy but never unkind remark. Electric in energy,
formidable in his incisiveness, he smote hard; but there
was nothing cruel about him, nor did he ever inflict
pain through heedless remarks. That would have been
a stupidity of which he was incapable. His quickness
and sureness of perception, joined with his abounding
kindliness, made him a man of almost infinite tact.
I had not known him long before I felt that the ruling
characteristic in his nature was ¢enderness. He re-
minded me of one of Charles Reade’s heroes, Colonel
Dujardin, who had the eye of a hawk, but down some-
where in the depths of that eye of a hawk there was
the eye of a dove. It was chiefly the sympathetic
quality in the man that exerted upon me an ever

216 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

strengthening spell. My experiences in visiting him
had one notable feature, which I found it hard to inter-
pret. After leaving the house, at the close of a Sun-
day evening, the outside world used to seem cold and
lonely for being cut off from that presence; yet on the
next Sunday, at the moment of his cordial greeting, a
feeling always came over me that up to that moment I
had never fully taken in how lovable he was, I had
never quite done him justice. In other words, no mat-
ter how vivid the image which I carried about in
my mind, it instantly seemed dim and poor in presence
of the reality. Such feelings are known to lovers;
in other relations of life they are surely unusual. I
was speaking about this to my dear old friend, the late
Alexander Macmillan, when he suddenly exclaimed:
“You may well feel so, my boy. I tell you, there is so
much real Christianity in Huxley that if it were par-
celled out among all the men, women, and children in
the British Islands, there would be enough to save the
soul of every one of them, and plenty to spare! ”

I have said that Huxley was never unkind; it is
perhaps hardly necessary to tell his readers that he
could be sharp and severe, if the occasion required. I
have heard his wife say that he never would allow
himself to be preyed upon by bores, and knew well
how to get ridof them. Some years after the time of
which I have been writing, I dined one evening at the
Savile Club with Huxley, Spencer, and James Sime.
As we were chatting over our coffee, some person
unknown to us came in and sat down on a sofa near
by. Presently, this man, becoming interested in the
conversation, cut short one of our party, and addressed
a silly remark to Spencer in reply to something which

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 217

he had been saying. Spencer’s answer was civil, but
brief, and not inviting. Nothing abashed, the stranger
kept on, and persisted in forcing himself into the con-
versation, despite our bleak frowns and arctic glances.
It was plain that something must be done, and while
the intruder was aiming a question directly at Huxley,
the latter turned his back upon him. This was intel-
ligible even to asinine apprehension, and the re-
mainder of our evening was unmolested.

I never knew (not being inquisitive) just when the
Huxleys began having their “tall teas” on Sunday
evenings; but during their first winter I seldom met
any visitors at their house, except once or twice Ray
Lankester and Michael Foster. Afterward, Huxley
with his wife, on their visit to America, spent a few
summer days with my family at Petersham, where the
great naturalist learned for the first time what a tin
dipper is. Once, in London, in speaking about the
starry heavens, I had said that I never could make
head or tail of any constellation except the Dipper,
and of course everybody must recognize in that the
resemblance to adipper. To my surprise, one of the
young ladies asked, “ What is a dipper?” My effort
at explanation went far enough to evoke the idea of a
“ladle,” but with that approximation I was fain to let
the matter rest until that August day in New England,
when, after a tramp in the woods, my friends quaffed
cool mountain water from a dipper, and I was told
that not only the name, but the thing, is a Yankee
notion.

Some time after this I made several visits to Eng-
land, giving lectures at the Royal Institution and
elsewhere, and saw the Huxleys often, and on one

218 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

occasion, with my wife, spent a fortnight or so at their
home in Marlborough Place. The Sunday evenings
had come to be a time for receiving friends, without
any of the formality that often attaches to “ receptions.”
Half a dozen or more would drop in for the “high
tea.” I then noticed the change in the adjective, and
observed that the phrase and the institution were not
absolutely confined to the Huxley household; but
their origin is still for me enshrouded in mystery, like
the “empire of the Toltecs.” After the informal and
jolly supper others would come in, until the company
might number from twenty to thirty. Among the
men whom I recall to mind (the married ones accom-
panied by their wives, of course) were Mark Pattison,
Lecky, and J. R. Green, Burdon Sanderson and Lau-
der Brunton, Alma Tadema, Sir James Stephen and
his brother Leslie, Sir Frederick Pollock, Lord Ar-
thur Russell, Frederic Harrison, Spencer Walpole,
Romanes, and Ralston. Some of these I met for the
first time; others were old friends. Nothing could
be more charming than the graceful simplicity with
which all were entertained, nor could anything be
more evident than the affectionate veneration which
everybody felt for the host.

The last time that I saw my dear friend was early
in 1883, just before coming home to America. I
found him lying on the sofa, too ill to say much, but
not too ill for a jest or two at his own expense. The
series of ailments had begun which were to follow
him for the rest of his days. I was much concerned
about him, but journeys to England had come to
seem such a simple matter that the thought of its
being our last meeting never entered my mind. A

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 219

few letters passed back and forth with the lapse of
years, the last one (in 1894) inquiring when I was
likely to be able to come and visit him in the pretty
home which he had made in Sussex, where he was
busy with “digging in the garden and spoiling grand-
children.” When the news of the end came, it was
as a sudden and desolating shock.

There were few magazines or newspapers which did
not contain articles about Huxley, and in general
those articles were considerably more than the cus-
tomary obituary notice. They were apt to be more
animated than usual, as if they had caught something
from the blithe spirit of the man; and they gave so
many details as to show the warm and widespread
interest with which he was regarded. One thing,
however, especially struck me. While the writers of
these articles seemed familiar with Huxley’s philo-
sophical and literary writings, with his popular lec-
tures on scientific subjects and his controversies with
sundry clergymen, they seemed to know nothing what-
ever about his original scientific work. It was really
a singular spectacle, if one pauses to think about it.
Here are a score of writers engaged in paying trib-
ute to a man as one of the great scientific lights of the
age, and yet, while they all know something about
what he would have considered his fugitive work, not
one of them so much as alludes to the cardinal
achievements in virtue of which his name marks an
epoch! It is very much as if the biographers of
Newton were to enlarge upon his official labours at
the Mint and his theory of light, while preserving a
dead silence as to gravitation and fluxions. A few
words concerning Huxley’s work will therefore not

220 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

seem superfluous. A few words are all that can here
be given; I cannot pretend even to make a well-
rounded sketch.

In one respect there was a curious similarity be-
tween the beginnings of Huxley’s scientific career
and of Darwin’s. Both went, as young men, on long
voyages into the southern hemisphere, in ships of the
royal navy, and from the study of organisms encoun-
tered on these voyages both were led to theories of vast
importance. Huxley studied with keen interest and
infinite patience the jellyfish and polyps floating on
the surface of the tropical seas through which his ship
passed. Without books or advisers, and with scant
aid of any sort except his microscope, which had to be
tied to keep it steady, he scrutinized and dissected
these lowly forms of life, and made drawings and dia-
grams illustrating the intricacies of their structure,
until he was able, by comparison, to attain some very
interesting results. During four years, he says, “I
sent home communication after communication to the
Linnzan Society, with the same result as that obtained
by Noah when he sent the raven out of his ark. Tired
at last of hearing nothing about them, I determined
to do or die, and in 1849 I drew up a more elaborate
paper, and forwarded it to the Royal Society.” This
was a memoir On the Anatomy and the Affinities of
the Family of Medusz; and it proved to be his dove,
though he did not know it until his return to England,
a year later. Then he found that his paper had been
published, and in 1851, at the age of twenty-six, he was
made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He went on
writing papers giving sundry results of his observations,
and the very next year received the society’s Royal

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 221

medal, a supreme distinction which he shared with
Joule, Stokes, and Humboldt. In the address upon the
presentation of the medal, the president, Lord Rosse,
declared that Huxley had not only for the first time
adequately described the Medusz and laid down
rational principles for classifying them, but had inaugu-
rated “a process of reasoning, the results of which can
scarcely yet be anticipated, but must bear in a very
important degree upon some of the most abstruse
points of what may be called transcendental physi-
ology.”

In other words, the youthful Huxley had made a dis-
covery that went to the bottom of things; and as in
most if not all such cases, he had enlarged our know-
ledge, not only of facts, but of methods. It was the
beginning of a profound reconstruction of the classifi-
cation of animals, extinct and living. In the earlier
half of the century the truest classification was Cu-
vier’s. That great genius emancipated himself from
the notion that groups of animals should be arranged
in an ascending or descending series, and he fully proved
the existence of three divergent types, — Vertebrata,
Mollusca, and Articulata. Some of the multitude of
animals lower or less specialized than these he grouped
by mistake along with Mollusca or Articulata, while
all the rest he threw into a fourth class, which he called
Radiata. It was evident that this type was far less
clearly defined than the three higher types. In fact, it
was open to the same kind of objection that used to be
effectively urged against Max Miiller’s so-called Tura-
nian group of languages: it was merely a negation.
Radiata were simply animals that were neither Articu-
lata nor Mollusca nor Vertebrata; in short, they were

222 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

a motley multitude, about which there was a prevail-
ing confusion of ideas at the time when young Huxley
began the study of jellyfish.

We all know how it was the work of the great
Esthonian embryologist, Baer, that turned Herbert
Spencer toward his discovery of the law of evolution.
It is therefore doubly interesting to know that in these
early studies Huxley also profited by his knowledge of
-Baer’s methods and results. It all tended toward a
theory of evolution, although Baer himself never got
so far as evolution in the modern sense; and as for
Huxley, when he studied Medusz, he was not con-
cerned with any general theory whatever, but only
with putting into shape what he saw.

And what he saw was that throughout their de-
‘velopment the Medusz consist of two foundation
membranes, or delicate weblike tissues of cells, — one
forming the outer integument, the other doing duty
as stomach lining, — and that there was no true body
cavity with blood-vessels. He showed that groups ap-
parently quite dissimilar, such as the hydroid and ser-
tularian polyps, the Physophoridz and sea anemones,
are constructed upon the same plan; and so he built
up his famous group of Ccelenterata, or animals with
only a stomach cavity, as contrasted with all higher
organisms, which might be called Ccelomata, or animals
with a true body cavity, containing a stomach with other
viscera and blood-vessels. In all Ccelomata, from the
worm up to man, there is a third foundation membrane.

Thus the Cuvierian group of Radiata was broken up,
and the way was prepared for this far more profound
and true arrangement: (1) Protozoa, such as the amoeba
and sponges, in which there is no distinct separation

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 223

of parts performing different functions; (2) Ccelente-
rata, in which there is a simple differentiation between
the inside, which accumulates energy, and the outside,
which expends it; and (3) Coelomata, in which the in-
side contains a more or less elaborate system of distinct
organs devoted to nutrition and reproduction, while the
outside is more or less differentiated into limbs and
sense organs for interaction with the outer world.
Though not yet an evolutionist, Huxley could not re-
press the prophetic thought that Ccelenterata are
‘ancient survivals, representing a stage through which
higher animal types must once have passed.

As further elaborated by Huxley, the development
above the ccelenterate stage goes on in divergent lines;
stopping abruptly in some directions, in others going
on to great lengths. Thus, in the direction taken by
echinoderms, the physical possibilities are speedily ex-
hausted, and we stop with starfishes and holothurians.
But among Annuloida, as Huxley called them, there is
more flexibility, and we keep on till we reach the true
Articulata in the highly specialized insects, arachnoids,
and crustaceans. It is still more interesting to follow
the Molluscoida, through which we are led, on the one
hand, to the true Mollusca, reaching their culmination
in the nautilus and octopus, and on the other hand to
the Tunicata, and so on to the vertebrates.

In the comparative anatomy of vertebrates, also,
Huxley’s achievements were in a high degree original
and remarkable. First in importance, perhaps, was
his classification of birds, in which their true position
and relationships were for the first time disclosed.
Huxley showed that all birds, extinct and living, must
be arranged in three groups, of which the first is repre-

224 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

sented by the fossil archzeopteryx with its hand-like
wing and lizard-like tail, the second by the ostrich and
its congeners, and the third by all other living birds.
He further demonstrated the peculiarly close relation-
ship between birds and reptiles through the extinct
dinosaurs. In all these matters his powerful originality
was shown in the methods by which these important
results were reached. [very new investigation which
he made seemed to do something toward raising the
study of biology to a higher plane, as for example his
celebrated controversy with Owen on the true nature
of the vertebrate skull. The mention of Owen reminds
us that it was also Huxley who overthrew Cuvier’s
order of Quadrumana, by proving that apes are not
four-handed, but have two hands and two feet; he
showed that neither in limbs nor in brain does man
present differences from other primates that are of
higher than generic value. Indeed, there were few
corners of the animal world, past or present, which
Huxley did not at some time or other overhaul, and to
our knowledge of which he did not make contributions
of prime importance. The instances here cited may
serve to show the kind of work which he did, but my
mention of them is necessarily meagre. In the depart-
ment of classification, the significance of which has
been increased tenfold by the doctrine of evolution,
his name must surely rank foremost among the suc-
cessors of the mighty Cuvier.

Before 1860 the vastness and accuracy of Huxley’s
acquirements and the soundness of his judgment were
well understood by the men of his profession, insomuch
that Charles Darwin, when about to publish “ The
Origin of Species,” said that there were three men in

REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY 225

England upon whose judgment he relied; if he could
convince those three, he could afford to wait for the
rest. The three were Lyell, Hooker, and Huxley, and
he convinced them. How sturdily Huxley fought
Darwin’s battles is inspiring to remember. Darwin
rather shrank from controversy, and, while he welcomed
candid criticism, seldom took any notice of ill-natured
attacks. On one occasion, nevertheless, a somewhat
ugly assault moved Darwin to turn and rend the assail-
ant, which was easily and neatly done in two pages at
the end of a scientific paper. Before publishing the
paper, however, Darwin sent it to Huxley, authorizing
him to omit the two pages if he should think it best.
Huxley promptly cancelled them, and sent Darwin a
delicious little note, saying that the retort was so excel-
lent that if it had been his own he should hardly have
had virtue enough to suppress it; but although it was
well deserved, he thought it would be better to refrain.
“Tf I say a savage thing, it is only ‘pretty Fanny’s
way’; but if you do, it is not likely to be forgotten.”
There was a friend worth having!

There can be little doubt, I think, that, without a
particle of rancour, Huxley did keenly feel the gaudzum
certaminis. He exclaimed among the trumpets, Ha!
ha! and was sure to be in the thickest of the fight.
His family seemed to think that the “Gladstonian
dose” had a tonic effect upon him. When he felt too
ill for scientific work, he was quite ready for a scrim-
mage with his friends the bishops. Not caring much
for episcopophagy (as Huxley once called it), and feel-
ing that controversy of that sort was but a slaying of
the slain, I used to grudge the time that was given to
it and taken from other things. In 1879 he showed

2Q

226 REMINISCENCES OF HUXLEY

me the synopsis of a projected book on “ The Dog,”
which was to be an original contribution to the phylo-
genetic history of the order Carnivora. The reader
who recalls his book on “ The Crayfish” may realize
what such a book about dogs would have been. It
was interrupted and deferred, and finally pushed aside,
by the thousand and one duties and cares that were
thrust upon him, — work on government commissions,
educational work, parish work, everything that a self-
sacrificing and public-spirited man could be loaded
with. In the later years, whenever I opened a maga-
zine and found one of the controversial articles, I read
it with pleasure, but sighed for the dog book.

I dare say, though, it was all for the best. “To
smite all humbugs, however big; to give a nobler tone
to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty
personal controversies, and of toleration for everything
but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is
recognized as mine or not, so long as it is done,” —
such were Huxley’s aims in life. And for these things,
in the words of good Ben Jonson, “I loved the man,
and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as
much as any.” |

VII 7

‘HERBERT SPENCER'S SERVICE TO |
| RELIGION

VII
HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION!

“ Fuvolution and religion: that which perfects hu-
manity cannot destroy religion.” — Mr. President and
Gentlemen: The thought which you have uttered
suggests so many and such fruitful themes of discus-
sion, that a whole evening would not suffice to enu-
merate them, while to illustrate them properly would
seem to require an octavo volume rather than a talk
of six or eight minutes, especially when such a talk
comes just after dinner. The Amazulu saying which
you have cited, that those who have “stuffed bodies ”
cannot see hidden things, seems peculiarly applicable
to any attempt to discuss the mysteries of religion at
the present moment; and, after the additional warn-
ing we have just had from our good friend Mr. Schurz,
I hardly know whether I ought to venture to approach
so vasta theme. There are one or two points of sig-

1 This address was delivered by Dr. Fiske at the farewell banquet to Mr.
Spencer given at Delmonico’s on the evening of November 9, 1882, the
Hon. William M. Evarts presiding. At itsconclusion, Mr. Spencer, who sat
near Dr. Fiske, partly rose in his chair and said, “ Fiske, should you develop
to the fullest the ideas you have expressed here this evening, I should regard it
as a fitting supplement to my life work.” A full report of the proceed-
ings at the banquet, prepared in pamphlet form by Professor E. L. You-
mans, under the title “Herbert Spencer on the Americans, and the
Americans on Herbert Spencer,” was published by D. Appleton & Com-
pany in 1883.

229

230 HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION

nal importance, however, to which I may at least call
attention fora moment. It is a matter which has long
since taken deep hold of my mind, and I am glad to
have a chance to say something about it on so fitting
an occasion. We have met here this evening to do
homage to a dear and noble teacher and friend, and
it is well that we should choose this time to recall the
various aspects of the immortal work by which he has
earned the gratitude of a world. The work which
Herbert Spencer has done in organizing the differ-
ent departments of human knowledge, so as to present
the widest generalizations of all the sciences in a new
and wonderful light, as flowing out of still deeper and
wider truths concerning the universe as a whole; the
great number of profound generalizations which he
has established incidentally to the pursuit of this
main object; the endlessly rich and_ suggestive
thoughts which he has thrown out in such profusion
by the wayside all along the course of this great phil-
osophical enterprise —all this work is so manifest
that none can fail to recognize it. It is work of the
caliber of that which Aristotle and Newton did;
though coming in this latter age, it as far surpasses
their work in its vastness of performance as the rail-
way surpasses the sedan chair, or as the telegraph sur-
passes the carrier-pigeon. But it is not of this side
of our teacher’s work that I wish to speak, but of a
side of it that has, hitherto, met with less general
recognition.

There are some people who seem to think that it
is not enough that Mr. Spencer should have made all
these priceless contributions to human knowledge, but
actually complain of him for not giving us a complete

HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 231

and exhaustive system of theology into the bargain.'
What I wish, therefore, to point out is that Mr.
Spencer’s work on the side of religion will be seen to
be no less important than his work on the side of
science, when once its religious implications shall
have been fully and consistently unfolded. If we look
at all the systems or forms of religion of which we
have any knowledge, we shall find that they differ in
many superficial features. They differ in many of
the transcendental doctrines which they respectively
preach, and in many of the rules of conduct which
they respectively lay down for men’s guidance. They
assert different things about the universe, and they
enjoin or prohibit different kinds of behaviour on the
part of their followers. The doctrine of the Trinity,
which to most Christians is the most sacred of myste-
ries, is to all Mohammedans the foulest of blas-
phemies; the Brahman’s conscience would be more
troubled if he were to kill a cow by accident, than if »
he were to swear to a lie or steal a purse; the Turk,
who sees no wrong in bigamy, would shrink from the
sin of eating pork. But, amid all such surface differ-
ences, we find throughout all known religions two
points of substantial agreement. And these two
points of agreement will be admitted by modern civ-
ilized men to be of far greater importance than the
innumerable differences of detail.

1 “Tt is clear that many persons have derived from Spencer’s use of the
word Unknowable an impression that he intends by metaphysics to refine
God away into nothing, whereas he no more cherishes any such intention
than did St. Paul, when he asked, ‘Who hath known the mind of the Lord,
or who hath been his counsellor’ ; no more than Isaiah did when he de-
declared, ‘ Even as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are Jehovah’s
ways higher than our ways and his thoughts than our thoughts.’ ” — JoHN
FISKE, “ Through Nature to God.”

232 HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION

All religions agree in the two following assertions,
one of which is of speculative and one of which is of
ethical importance. One of them serves to sustain
and harmonize our thoughts about the world we live
in, and our place in that world; the other serves to
uphold us in our efforts to do each what we can to
make human life more sweet, more full of goodness
and beauty, than we find it. The first of these asser-
tions is the proposition that the things and events of
the world do not exist or occur blindly or irrelevantly,
but that all, from the beginning to the end of time,
and throughout the furthest sweep of illimitable space,
are connected together as the orderly manifestations
of a divine Power, and that this divine Power is
something outside of ourselves, and upon it our own
existence from moment to moment depends. The
second of these assertions is the proposition that men
ought to do certain things, and ought to refrain from
doing certain other things; and that the reason why
some things are wrong to do and other things are
right to do is in some mysterious, but very real, way
connected with the existence and nature of this divine
Power, which reveals itself in every great and every
tiny thing, without which not a star courses in its
mighty orbit, and not a sparrow falls to the ground.
Matthew Arnold once summed up these two propo-
sitions very well when he defined God as “an eternal
Power, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.”
This twofold assertion, that there is an eternal Power
that is not ourselves, and that this Power makes for
righteousness, is to be found, either in a rudimentary
or in a highly developed state, in all known religions.
In such religions as those of the Esquimaux or of

HERBERT SPENCER'S SERVICE TO RELIGION 233

your friends the Amazulus, Mr. President, this asser-
tion is found in a rudimentary shape on each of its
two sides, — the speculative side and the ethical side;
in such religions as Buddhism or Judaism it is found
in a highly developed shape on both its sides. But
the main point is that in all religions you find it in
some shape or other. Isaid,a moment ago, that mod-
ern civilized men will all acknowledge that this two-
sided assertion, in which all religions agree, is of far
greater importance than any of the superficial points
in which religions differ. It is really of much more
concern to us that there is an eternal Power, not our-
selves, that makes for righteousness, than that such a
Power is onefold or threefold in its metaphysical na-
ture, or that we ought not to play cards on Sunday, or
to eat meat on Friday. No one, I believe, will deny
so simple and clear a statement as this. But it is not
only we modern men, who call ourselves enlightened,
that will agree to this. I doubt not even the narrow-
minded bigots of days now happily gone by would
have been made to agree to it if they could have had
some doggedly persistent Socrates to cross-question
them. Calvin was willing to burn Servetus for doubt-
ing the doctrine of the Trinity, but Ido not suppose
that even Calvin would have argued that the belief in
God’s threefold nature was more fundamental than
the belief in His existence and His goodness. The
philosophical error with him was that he could not
dissociate the less important doctrine from the more
important doctrine, and the fate of the latter seemed
to him wrapped up with the fate of the former. I
cite this merely as a typical example. What men in
past times have really valued in their religion has been

234 HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION

the universal twofold assertion that there is a God,
who is pleased with the sight of the just man and is
angry with the wicked every day, and when men have
fought with one another, and murdered or calumniated
one another for heresy about the Trinity or about eat-
ing meat on Friday, it has been because they have
supposed belief inythe non-essential doctrines to be
inseparably connected with belief in the essential doc-
trine. In spite of all this, however, it is true that in
the mind of the uncivilized man, the great central
truths of religion are so densely overlaid with hun-
dreds of trivial notions respecting dogma and ritual,
that his perception of the great central truths is ob-
scure. These great central truths, indeed, need to be
clothed in a dress of little rites and superstition, in
order to take hold of his dull and untrained intelli-
gence. But in proportion as men become more civ-
ilized, and learn to think more accurately, and to take
wider views of life, just so do they come to value
the essential truths of religion more highly, while
they attach less and less importance to superficial
details.

Having thus seen what is meant by the essential
truths of religion, it is very easy to see what the atti-
tude of the doctrine of evolution is toward these
essential truths. It asserts and reiterates them both;
and it asserts them not as dogmas handed down to us
by priestly tradition, not as mysterious intuitive con-
victions of which we can render no account to our-
selves, but as scientific truths concerning the innermost
constitution of the universe —truths that have been
disclosed by observation and reflection, like other sci-
entific truths, and that accordingly harmonize naturally

HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 235

and easily with the whole body of our knowledge.
The doctrine of evolution asserts, as the widest and
deepest truth which the study of nature can disclose
to us, that there exists a power to which no limit in
time or space is conceivable, and that all the phenom-
ena of the universe, whether they be what we call
material or what we call spiritual phenomena, are
manifestations of this infinite and eternal Power. Now
this assertion, which Mr. Spencer has so elaborately
set forth as a scientific truth —nay, as the ultimate
truth of science, as the truth upon which the whole
structure of human knowledge philosophically rests
—this assertion is identical with the assertion of an
eternal Power, not ourselves, that forms the speculative
basis of all religions. When Carlyle speaks of the
universe as in very truth the star-domed city of God,
and reminds us that through every crystal and through
every grass blade, but most through every living
soul, the glory of a present God still beams, he means
pretty much the same thing that Mr. Spencer means,
save that he speaks with the language of poetry, with
language coloured by emotion, and not with the precise,
formal, and colourless language of science. By many
critics who forget that names are but the counters
rather than the hard money of thought, objections
have been raised to the use of such a phrase as the
Unknowable, whereby to describe the power that is
manifest in every event of the universe. Yet, when
the Hebrew prophet declared that “ by him were laid
the foundations of the deep,” but reminded us “ Who
by searching can find him out ?” he meant pretty much
what Mr. Spencer means when he speaks of a power
that is inscrutable in itself, yet is revealed from moment

236 HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION

to moment in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life
of the universe.

And this brings me to the last and most important
point of all. What says the doctrine of evolution with
regard to the ethical side of this twofold assertion
that lies at the bottom of all religion? Though we
cannot fathom the nature of the inscrutable Power that
animates the world, we know, nevertheless, a great
many things that it does. Does this eternal Power,
then, work for righteousness? Is there a divine sanc-
tion for holiness and a divine condemnation for sin?
Are the principles of right living really connected
with the intimate constitution of the universe? If the
answer of science to these questions be affirmative,
then the agreement with religion is complete, both on
the speculative and on the practical side; and that
phantom which has been the abiding terror of timid
and superficial minds — that phantom of the hostility
between religion and science — is exorcised now and
forever. Now,,science began to return a decisively
affirmative answer to such questions as these when it
began, with Mr. Spencer, to explain moral beliefs and
moral sentiments as products of evolution. For clearly,
when you say of a moral belief or a moral sentiment,
that it is a product of evolution, you imply that it is
something which the universe through untold ages has
been labouring to bring forth, and you ascribe to ita
value proportionate to the enormous effort it has cost
to produce it. Still more, when with Mr. Spencer we
study the principles of right living as part and parcel
of the whole doctrine of the development of life upon
the earth; when we see that in an ultimate analysis
that is right which tends to enhance fulness of life, and

HERBERT SPENCER’S SERVICE TO RELIGION 237

that is wrong which tends to detract from fulness of
life — we then see that the distinction between right
and wrong is rooted in the deepest foundations of the
universe; we see that the very same forces, subtle, and
exquisite, and profound, which brought upon the scene
the primal germs of life and caused them to unfold,
which through countless ages of struggle and death
has cherished the life that could live more perfectly
and destroyed the life that could only live less perfectly,
until humanity, with all its hopes, and fears, and
aspirations, has come into being as the crown of all
this stupendous work — we see that these very same
subtle and exquisite forces have wrought into the very
fibres of the universe those principles of right living
which it is man’s highest function to put into practice.
The theoretical sanction thus given to right living is
incomparably the most powerful that has ever been
assigned in any philosophy of ethics. Human respon-
sibility is made more strict and solemn than ever, when
the eternal Power that lives in every event of the uni-
verse is thus seen to be in the deepest possible sense
the author of the moral law that should guide our lives,
and in obedience to which lies our only guarantee of
the happiness which is incorruptible — which neither
inevitable misfortune nor unmerited obloquy can ever
take away. I have but rarely touched upon a rich and
suggestive topic. When this subject shall once have
been expounded and illustrated with due thorough-
ness —-as I earnestly hope it will be within the next
few years —then I am sure it will be generally acknow-
ledged that our great teacher’s services to religion have
been no less signal than his services to science, unparal-
leled as these have been in all the history of the world.

VIII

JOHN TYNDALL

THE recent death of Professor Tyndall has removed
from us a man of preéminent scientific and literary
power, an early advocate and expositor of the doctrine
of evolution, and one of the most genial and interest-
ing personalities that could anywhere be found. It
seems to me that this meeting of a club devoted to
the study of evolution is a fitting occasion for a few
words respecting Tyndall in these different capacities, —
as a scientific inquirer, as an evolutionist, and as a man.

Tyndall was born in August, 1820, and was there-
fore four months younger than his friend, Herbert
Spencer, whose seventy-fourth birthday will come on
the twenty-seventh of next month. Tyndall’s strong
interest in science, like Spencer’s, was manifested in
boyhood, and there were some curious points of like-
ness between the early careers of the two. Neither
went to college or studied according to the ordinary
routine, and both received marked intellectual stimu-
lus from their fathers. As Spencer was engaged in
civil engineering from the age of seventeen to that of
one-and-twenty, during which time he took part in
building the London and Birmingham Railroad, so
Tyndall from nineteen to twenty-four was employed
in the ordnance survey, and then for three years
worked at civil engineering. Both went a good way
in the study of mathematics, but the differences in

2R 241

242 JOHN TYNDALL

their dominant tastes were already shown. As a boy,
Spencer was deeply interested in the rearing of in-
sects and studying their transformations, while he
also achieved no mean proficiency as a_ botanist.
Tyndall, on the other hand, was from the first very
much absorbed in molecular physics. The dance of
molecules and atoms, in its varied figures, had an
irresistible attraction for him. In 1848, after giving
up his position as a civil engineer, he went to the
University of Marburg, where he received a doctor’s
degree in 1851. His work at the university consisted
chiefly of original investigations on the relations of
magnetism and diamagnetism to molecular arrange-
ment. It resulted in a paper published in the PAz?-
osophical Magazine in 1850, which at onge made
Tyndall famous. It showed the qualities for which
his work was ever afterward distinguished. As Hux-
ley says of him: “ That which he knew, he knew
thoroughly, had turned over on all sides, and probed
through and through. Whatever subject he took up,
he never rested till he had attained a clear conception
of all the conditions and processes involved, or had
satisfied himself that it was not attainable. And in
dealing with physical problems, I really think that he,
in a manner, saw the atoms and molecules, and ‘felt
their pushes and pulls.’”

When, after a further year of work at the University
of Berlin, Tyndall returned to England, he was at once
elected a Fellow of the Royal oF and one of the
secretaries of the physical section of the British Asso-
ciation, distinguished honours for a young man of two-
and-thirty. In the following year he was appointed
Fullerian Professor of Physics in the Royal Institution.

JOHN TYNDALL 243

This gave him command of a magnificent laboratory
with which to pursue his investigations. Faraday was
then Director of the Institution, so that for the next
fourteen years the two men were brought into close
relations. A more delightful situation for a scientific
investigator can hardly be imagined. It was in 1851
and 1852, just as this career of work in London was
beginning, that Tyndall became acquainted with
Spencer, who, as already observed, was about his own
age, and with Huxley, who was five years younger.
This was the beginning of friendships of the most
intimate sort; the mutual respect and affection be-
tween the three was always charming to contemplate.
On all sorts of minor topics they were liable to differ
in opinion, and they never hesitated a moment about
criticising or attacking each other. The atmosphere
of the room in which those three men were gathered
was not likely to be an atmosphere of monotonous
assent; the enlivening spice of controversy was seldom
far away; but the fundamental harmony between them
was profound, for all cared immeasurably more for
truth than for anything else. It was no small intel-
lectual boon in life, no trifling moral support, for either
of those men to have the friendship of the other two.
Of Tyndall’s original scientific work, an important
part related to the explanation of the causes and nature
of the motion of glaciers. His contributions to this
difficult and important subject were of the highest
value. These investigations led him to visit the Alps
almost every year from 1856 until the close of his life,
though long before the end the views set forth by him
in 1860 had come to be generally accepted. The ex-
plorations in the Alps gave Tyndall a fine opportunity

244 JOHN TYNDALL

to indulge his propensity for climbing. It was not at
all difficult to imagine him descended from a creature
arboreal in its habits. He was very strong in the arms
and fingers, while his weight, I should think, could
hardly have exceeded one hundred and thirty, or at
most one hundred and forty pounds. He would
scamper up steep places like a cat. One of the
Cunard captains told me that once when Tyndall
crossed the ocean in his steamer, he had secured
special permission to climb in the rigging, and seemed
never so much at home as when slipping up between
crosstrees or hanging upon a yard-arm.

In 1867, on Faraday’s death, Tyndall succeeded him
as Director of the Royal Institution, and soon after-
ward began his remarkable series of inquiries into the
cause of the changing colours of the ocean. This led
to inquiries into the light of the sky, and the discovery
that its blue colour is due to the reflection of certain
rays of light from the tiny surfaces of countless par-
ticles of matter floating in the atmosphere. This
opened the door to studies of the organic matter held
in suspension in the atmosphere, and to the relations
between dust and disease, a most fruitful subject. In
the course of these studies occurred the famous con-
troversy on Spontaneous Generation, in which Dr.
Bastian contended that sundry low forms of life de-
tected in hermetically sealed flasks must have been
newly generated from organizable materials within the
flask; against which view Tyndall proved that no one
has yet sealed a flask so hermetically that germs can-
not enter. It was the same question which had been
argued in France between Pouchet and Pasteur; but
Tyndall’s researches strengthened the case against

JOHN TYNDALL 245

spontaneous generation, and materially helped the
new and epoch-making germ theory of disease.

Another grand division of Tyndall’s work relates to
radiant heat. His work on this subject began in 1859,
and was kept up during the greater part of his life.
Perhaps the most important part of it was comprised
in his researches on the transmutation of the dark heat
rays below the red end of the spectrum and their rela-
tions to the luminous rays. But upon these and sun-
dry points in optics and acoustics to which Tyndall
made notable contributions I do not feel competent to
speak.

Among those of Tyndall’s books which have a place
in literature as well as in science, “ Heat considered as
a Mode of Motion” is doubtless the most eminent. At
the time when it was published, in 1863, the doctrines
of the correlation of forces and the conservation of
energy were still among the novelties, and the re-
searches of Joule, Helmholtz, and Mayer, which had
done so much to establish them, were not generally
understood. Tyndall’s book came in the nick of
time; it was a masterpiece of scientific exposition such
as had not been seen for many a day; and it did more
than any other book to make men familiar with those
all-pervading physical truths that lie at the bottom of
the doctrine of evolution. This book, moreover,
showed Tyndall not only as a master in physical
investigation, but as an eminent literary artist and one
of the best writers of English prose that our age has
seen.

Tyndall’s other direct connections with the exposi-
tion of evolution have consisted mainly in detached
statements of special points from time to time in brief

246 JOHN TYNDALL

essays or lectures. The most famous of these was the
Belfast Address, delivered in 1874, which created so
much commotion fora short time. The cry of “mate-
rialism,” which then resounded so loudly, would now,
I imagine, disturb very few people. So effective was
it then in some quarters that in one of Tyndall’s letters
I find that Cardinal Cullen appointed a three days’ fast,
in order to keep infidelity out of Ireland.

My ew acquaintance with Tyndall began in 1872,
when he was giving a course of lectures at the Lowell
Institute in Boston. I had never been in England,
but I had been in friendly correspondence with Her-
bert Spencer for several years, so that I found the
acquaintance with Tyndall was virtually made already,
and we at once became warm friends.

His success as a lecturer was complete. At first he
was a little in danger from feeling in doubt as to the
intellectual level of his audiences,—a doubt which
has played the mischief with some British lecturers in
America. The late Mr. Freeman, for example, thought
it necessary to instruct his audiences in Boston and
St. Louis in the rudiments of English history, and
was voted a bore for his pains, when there was so
much he might have said to which people would have
listened with breathless interest. Tyndall received
early warning to talk exactly as he would at the Royal
Institution. His illustrative experiments were beauti-
fully done, his speech was easy and eloquent, and his
manner, so frank and earnest and kindly, was extremely
winning. It was a rare treat to hear him lecture.

Tyndall, though far from wealthy, was always in
easy circumstances and was remarkably generous. I
have read scores of his business letters to Youmans and

JOHN TYNDALL 247

the Appletons, since I have been writing the Life of
Youmans,! and I have been struck with the fact that
the question of payment never seemed to be in Tyn-
dall’s mind. Before he came over here he told You-
mans that nothing would induce him to carry away
a cent of American money. His one lecture season
earned about $13,000 for him, and that he left in the
hands of trustees as a fund for helping the study of
the natural sciences in America.

The next year I went to England and spent most
of a year in London. Then I saw much of Tyndall,
as well as of Spencer and Huxley. I dined with them
once at their famous X Club, of which the six other
members were Hooker, Busk, Frankland, Lubbock,
Hirst, and Spottiswoode. As Spencer says, “out of
this nine [he himself] was the only one who was
fellow of no society and had presided over nothing.”
It was a jolly company. They dined together once a
month, and the ordering of a dinner was usually en-
trusted to Spencer, who was an expert in gastronomy,
and as eminent in the synthesis of a menu as in
any other branch of synthetic philosophy. Tyndall
abounded in good humour and was then as always one
of the merriest of the party. We often met, sometimes
with Clifford and Lewes, at dainty little suppers in
Spencer’s lodgings, or at Sunday evening teas at Hux-
ley’s, on which occasions I have known men berated
as materialists to join in singing psalm-tunes. But
one of the best places to hobnob with Tyndall was in
his own lodgings at the top of the Royal Institution,
on Albemarle Street, the rooms which had once been

1“ Edward Livingston Youmans,” by John Fiske. D. Appleton &
Company, 1894.

248 JOHN TYNDALL

occupied by Sir Humphry Davy and then by Fara-
day. It was always an inspiration to go there. In
those days Tyndall kept bachelor’s hall, and it was his
regular habit, year after year, to dine with Spencer
and Hirst at the Athenzeum Club. But at length, in
the course of his Alpine scrambles, he met the charm-
ing and accomplished lady who, in 1875, became his
wife. She must have been twenty years younger than
himself. She was daughter of Lord Claud Hamil-
ton, member of a well-known Scottish family, and
thereby hung a little incident which used to make us
alllaugh. The association between Tyndall and Hux-
ley long ago became in some people’s minds so close
as to identify the one with the other. So when Huxley
and his wife, who had been married nearly thirty years
and had seven children, came to America in 1876, one
of the New York papers gravely heralded the arrival of
Huxley with his titled bride!* And this sort of blun-
der is not peculiar to America. In a recent letter,
Huxley tells me that since Tyndall’s death he has
read in a religious paper an obituary notice in which
he [Huxley] figures instead of his friend, and is
roundly vituperated for his flagrant heresies.

The last time I ever saw Tyndall was when I was
last in England, in 1883. He was then living with
his wife in those same old rooms at the Royal Insti-
tution, and there I dined with them and spent several
evenings.

1 This incident is mentioned in “ Reminiscences of Huxley,” p. 200.

IX

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

IX
EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

Ir has now for many years been a matter of common
remark that we are living in a wonderful age, an age
which has witnessed extraordinary material and intel-
lectual progress. This is a mere commonplace, but it
is not until we have given some close attention to the
facts that we realize the dimensions of the truth which
it expresses. The chief characteristics of the nine-
teenth century may be said to have been on the mate-
rial side the creation of mechanical force, and on the
intellectual side the unification of nature. Neither of
these expressions is quite free from objections, but they
will sufficiently serve the purpose. When we consider
the creation of mechanical force, it is clear that what
has been done in this direction since the days of James
Watt marks an era immeasurably greater than that of
the rise or fall of any historic empire. It marks an era
as sharp and bold as that era which witnessed the
domestication of oxen and horses far back in the dim
prehistoric past. Man was but a feeble creature when
his only means of carriage was his two feet, and his
tools were such as a wooden stick for a crowbar and a
stone for cracking nuts, and his diet was limited to
fruit and herbs, or such fish as he could catch in shal-
low waters and devour without cooking. Countless
poets have celebrated the day when he first learned
how to strike a spark from the stone and kindle a fire.

251

252 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

The remembrance of it, indeed, hovers over many a
system of ancient mythology, where the Prometheus
who brings to mankind the good gift of fire is apt to
be associated with the Dionysus who teaches him how
to ferment his drinks. A great step forward it was
when the invention of the bow and arrow enabled him
to slay his foes at a distance, and greatly increase his
supply of game; another great step it was when the
water-tight baskets, and still better, the kettle of baked
clay, enabled him to boil his roots and herbs, his fish
and flesh; all these were stages in progress that mark
long eras in that remote past which we call the Stone
Age, |

During all those weary stages man could control
only such mechanical force as was supplied by his
own muscles, eked out here and there by the rudest
forms of lever and wedge, roller and pulley, such as
are found in the absence of tools, or perhaps by
the physical strength of his fellow-men, if he were so
fortunate as to control it. But a time came when man
learned how to turn to his own uses the gigantic
strength of oxen and horses, and when that day came
it was such an era as the world had never before wit-
nessed. So great and so manifold were the results of
this advancement, that doubtless they furnished the
principal explanation of the fact that the human race
developed so much more rapidly in the eastern hemi-
sphere than in the western. In my book on the Dis-
covery of America, I have shown that at the time when
the western hemisphere was visited by the Europeans
of the sixteenth century after Christ its foremost races,
in the highlands of Mexico, Central America, and Peru,
had in respect of material progress reached a point

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 253

nearly abreast of that which had been attained in
Egypt and Babylonia, perhaps seven thousand or eight
thousand years before Christ; and this difference of
nine or ten millenniums in advancement can be to a
very considerable extent explained by the absence of
horses and oxen in the western hemisphere. If such
a statement surprises you, just stop and consider what
an immense part of our modern civilization goes back
by linear stages of succession to the era of pastoral life,
that state of society which is described for us in the
book of Genesis and in the Odyssey; then try to imag-
ine what the history of the world as we know it would
have been without that pastoral stage. But I must
not tarry over this point. Another great stage was
marked by the smelting of iron, and yet another by
the invention of writing; the latter being on the intel-
lectual side of progress an equivalent for the acquisi-
tion of ox and horse power on the material side.

Now this invention of writing seems very ancient,
for the city of Nippur contains tablets which may be
eight thousand or nine thousand years old, yet which
are perfectly legible for modern scholars. The interval
is not a long one when measured by the existence of
the human race, yet it naturally seems long to our un-
taught minds because it includes and contains the
whole of recorded human history. Here we come
upon one of the things which the doctrine of evolution
is doing for us. It is altering our perspective; it is
teaching us that the whole of recorded history is but a
narrow fringe upon the stupendous canvas along which
the existence of humanity stretches back; and thus it
is profoundly modifying our view of man in his rela-
tions to the universe.

254 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

Be it long or short, the next epoch-marking change
experienced by mankind after the dawn of civilization
was the invention of the steam engine by James Watt.
The impulse to this stupendous invention was given
by Joseph Black’s discovery of latent heat, one of the
first long strides that was made into the region of
molecular physics. From Black and Watt down to the
latest discoveries in electricity there has been an un-
broken sequence of achievement, and its fundamental
characteristic has been the creation of mechanical force
or motor energy. This has become possible through
our increased knowledge of the interior constitution
of matter. Having learned something about the habits
and proclivities of atoms and molecules, we are taking
advantage of this knowledge to accumulate vast quan-
tities of force and turn it in directions prescribed by
human aims and wants. This may properly be called
creation, in the same sense that a poem or a symphony
is created. We apply the qualities of matter to the
achievement of results impossible save through the
-intervention of man.

The most striking fact about this voluntary creation
of motor energy is the sudden and enormous extension
which it has given to human power over the world in
innumerable ways. It has been well said that our
world at the present day is much smaller and more
snug than the world in the time of Herodotus, inas-
much as a man can now travel the whole length of the
earth’s circumference in less time than it would have
taken Herodotus to go the length of the Mediterranean,
and not only in less time, but with much less discomfort
and peril and with fewer needful changes of speech.
This is very true, but it could not have been said a

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 255

hundred years ago. The change has occurred close
upon our own time.

When the postal service was inaugurated between
New York and Boston in 1673 by Governor Lovelace,
it took a month to cover the distance on horseback,
and people were fain to be content with letters and
news a month old. Midway between that time and
the present, in the days when a group of statesmen
assembled at Philadelphia were framing our federal
constitution, the distance between New York and
Boston had been reduced from a month to a week, and
a single stage-coach starting daily from each end of
the route sufficed for all the passengers and all the
freight between the two cities except such bulky freight
as went bysea. Now the fact that we can go from New
York to Paris or to Vancouver Island within the com-
pass of a week brings with it many far-reaching conse-
quences. Politically, it gives to a nation like our own,
spread over three million square miles of territory, such
advantages as were formerly confined to small states like
the republics of ancient Greece, or of Italy and the
Netherlands in the Middle Ages. It is perpetually
bringing people into contact with new faces, new climes,
new forms of speech, new habits of thought, thus mak-
ing the human mind more flexible than of old, more hos-
pitable toward new ideas, more friendly to strangers.
But these are not the only effects. Not only have
numerous petty manufactures, formerly carried on in
separate households, given place to gigantic factories,
but the organization of every form of industry has been
profoundly modified by railways and telegraphs. It
becomes easier in many instances to do things directly
that would once have been done by proxy, or, if

256 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

agencies are resorted to, they can be established where
once they would not have paid; materials are em-
ployed which the cost of transportation would once
have made inaccessible; great commercial houses at
distant points supersede small ones near at hand, while
vast sections of farming and grazing country are brought
near to metropolitan markets thousands of miles off ;
and thus in these various ways the tendency is to
specialize industries in the places where they can best
be conducted. The net result is a marked increase
in the comfort of the great mass of people. A given
amount of human effort can secure a much greater
number of the products of industry, so that life is on
its material side variously enriched.

But there are other ways of creating motor energy
besides utilizing the expansive force of steam. Almost
hand in hand with the development of the steam engine
has gone the progress of electric discovery from Galvani
and Volta to Faraday, calling into existence a number
of astounding inventions and introducing us to a new
chamber in the temple of knowledge of which we have
doubtless barely crossed the threshold. I need not
enlarge upon the telephone, the phonograph, the use
of electricity for lighting and heating, but a word may
be said concerning electricity as a source of motor
power on a great scale. What would men have said
a century ago to the idea of harnessing the stupendous
gravitative force of Niagara Falls into the service of
manufactories in the city of Buffalo, simply by turning
it into electricity and distributing it on wires over miles
of country? Yet at that time one of the greatest of
American thinkers, Benjamin Thompson of Woburn,
better known as Count Rumford, was leading the way

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 257

toward the establishment of the theory upon which
that mighty achievement rests, the theory of the cor-
relation of forces, or rather, perhaps, of the transform-
ableness of modes of molecular motion, which is to-day
the fundamental truth upon which the doctrine of evo-
lution is based.

I spoke a moment ago of the great historic impor-
tance of the domestication of oxen and horses. The
essential feature of the present day is that instead of
borrowing motor energy from these noble and benefi-
cent creatures, we manufacture it through deft manipu-
lation of the forces of inorganic matter. Already the
time is visibly approaching when the muscular strength
of horses and oxen will be among the least of their
uses to man. The number of horseless carriages that
one meets on the street increases day by day; and elec-
tric cars, even in their present clumsy stage of devel-
opment, are doing much to modify the face of things.
One of the first effects of railways was to centralize
industries and enable a greater number of people to
live upon a given area; and hence one of the charac-
teristic features of the century, by no means confined
to America, has been the unprecedented increase in
the size of cities. Now a visible effect of the short-
distance electric tramway is to aid the diffusion of
city populations over increasingly large suburban
areas. The result will doubtless be to enhance alike
the comfort of the town and the civilization of the
country.

Yet another method of creating motor energy is
through chemical processes, one of the earliest of which
was the invention of gunpowder four centuries ago;
but at the close of the eighteenth century a new era set

2S

258 - EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

in and chemistry entered upon a career of achievement
too vast for the imagination to compass. In my own
mind familiarity has not yet begun to deaden the feel-
ing of stupefied amazement when I reflect that scarcely
a century has elapsed since Dr. Priestley informed man-
kind of the existence of oxygen. At the present day man
has created in the laboratory more than one hundred
thousand distinct substances which never existed before
and never would havecome into existence but for the hu-
man mind. Weare now able to deal with one hundred
thousand kinds of matter which were absent from the
world of our great-grandfathers. These new material
creations have their properties, like other kinds of matter.
They react upon incident forces, each after its peculiar
manner. They are useful in countless ways in the
industrial arts, they furnish us with thousands of new
medicines, and here and there they enable our spiritual
vision to penetrate a little farther than formerly into
the habits and behaviour of the myriad swinging and
dancing atoms that taken together make the visible
world.

I have said enough for my present purpose about
that creation of motor energy, alike in regard to masses
and in regard to molecules and atoms, which is the
leading characteristic of the present age on its ma-
terial side. We have now to consider what I called
its chief characteristic on the intellectual or spiritual
side, namely, the unification of nature. I said at the
outset that this phrase is not altogether satisfactory,
and perhaps we might substitute for it the doctrine of
evolution. At all events, I wish to point out that the
doctrine of evolution amounts to pretty much the same
thing as the unification of nature. In order to illustrate

ee

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 259

my meaning, let us consider a few familiar incidents
in the history of scientific discovery.

Every achievement in science has consisted in point-
ing out likenesses that had before remained undetected.
Every scientific inquirer is on the lookout for such
likenesses. If the likeness assigned be a wrong one,
we have false science. For example, in order to ac-
count for the movement of the starry heaven from east
to west, some of the ancient astronomers fancied that
the earth was encompassed by a revolving crystalline
sphere in which countless points of light were set for
the purpose of illuminating the earth during the sun’s
absence. Because the stars preserve the same relations
of position, one to another, they were supposed to be
fastened on the inside of this sphere, and in accordance
with this theory we have such phrases as “fixed stars”
and “firmament.” Here men sought to explain the un-
known by analogies with the known, but the likeness
turned out to have been entirely mistaken. The merit
of the Newtonian astronomy was that it found in the
known world the correct likeness to that which was
going on in the unknown world. Copernicus had
shown that it is not the earth, but the sun, which forms
the centre of the planetary system; Kepler had gone
on to show that the planets revolve about the sun in
ellipses and in accordance with certain laws of motion
which he described ; the question remained, Why do
the planets move in this way? Does each one have a
guardian. angel to pull it or push it along, or must we
perhaps give up the case without any explanation?
Then Newton came and showed that what happens in
the sky is just what happens on the earth. The earth
pulls the moon exactly as it pulls the falling apple;

260 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

and the moon does not fall simply because its momen-
tum keeps it as far away as it can get, exactly like a
pebble whirled at the end of a string. It remained to
show that the force of the pull varied directly with the
mass of the bodies, and inversely, with the squares of
their distances apart; and then it became necessary to
know that the planetary motions thus produced would
agree with what Kepler had shown them to be. The
successful accomplishment of this task remains to-day
the great typical instance of a perfect scientific discov-
ery. It is further memorable as the first successful
leap of the human mind from the earth on which man
treads into the abysses of celestial space. Be it ob-
served that what Newton did was to show that through-
out the world of the solar system certain things go on
exactly as they do in your own parlour and kitchen.
Whether it be in the next street or out on the farthest
planet, it is equally true that unsupported bodies fall
and that things whirled try to get away.

I say, then, that Newton’s discovery was a great step
toward the unification of nature; it was the first deci-
sive step in the demonstration that the universe is not
one thing here and another thing there, but is animated
by a principle of action that yields similar results wher-
ever you go. Newton expressed his law of gravitation
in terms that were universal, and there can be no doubt
that he believed it to hold true of the stellar regions ;
yet it is only within the present century that the cor-
rectness of this latter opinion has been proved by direct
observation. We may now safely affirm that the whole
stellar universe conforms to the law of gravitation, but
we can also go much farther than this. The wonderful
discovery of spectrum analysis by Kirchhoff and Bunsen

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 261

in 1861 has shown that the whole stellar universe is
made up of the same chemical materials as those with
which we are familiar upon the earth. A part of the
dazzling brilliance of the noonday sun is due to the
vapour of iron floating in his atmosphere, and the faint
luminosity of the remotest cloud-like nebula is the glow
of just such hydrogen as enters into every drop of water
that we drink. But this is not quite the whole story.
The study of spectrum analysis has shown that the
most deeply individual and characteristic attribute of
any substance whatever is the number and arrange-
ment of the lines and bands which it makes in the
spectrum. You cannot say of iron that it is always
black, for you have often seen it red, and occasionally,
perhaps, white; nor can you say that it is always cold
or hard; and if it has weight invariably, that is no more
than can be said of other things besides iron. But
whether black or white, hot or cold, smooth or rough,
hard or soft, iron is that substance which when heated
till it is luminous, always throws upon the spectrum
the same elaborately complicated system of lines and
bands, which are different from those that are thrown
by any other substance. The revelations of the spec-
troscope therefore show that in all parts of the universe
the interior constitution of matter is the same, and that
_ its manifestations in the forms of light and heat are of
the same character and conformable to the same physi-
cal laws. There is not one science of mechanics for
the earth, or one kind of optics for Sirius, or one law
of radiation for Jupiter, but from end to end of the visi-
ble universe the same laws hold sway and the funda-
mental principles of action are the same.

Not only is it true that the same physical laws hold

262 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

good throughout all space, but also throughout all
time, as far as the farthest stretches of space and
time that science can reveal to us. These are points
of singular interest, inasmuch as our solar system is
by no means stationary in the universe. It has long
been known that our sun is flying through space with
enormous velocity toward the region which we call
the constellation Hercules, carrying with him his
attendant planets with their moons. The revolving
year, therefore, never brings us back to the place
where it found us, but to a point many millions of
miles distant. Is there not something rather thrilling
in the thought that we are never staying in a familiar
spot, but always plunging with a speed more than a
thousand times as great as that of an express train
through black and silent abysses never before revealed
to us? Such being the case, it is interesting to be
assured that no matter how long this continues, we
may depend upon the beneficent’ uniformity of nature’s
processes. The mariners of four centuries ago, who
urged their frail ships down the Senegambian coast
toward the equator, were sometimes assailed with
fears lest they should suddenly come into some boil-
ing sea, where clouds of scalding steam would engulf
them. But that unification of nature toward which
modern science has led us quite removes the fear that,
in the future wanderings of our earthly habitat, we are
likely to encounter any other conditions than those
that have prevailed throughout the past.

The unification of nature in point of time has been
the work of the nineteenth century and especially of
its geologists. When it was first proved that the age
of the earth is not six thousand years, but many mill-

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 263

ions, there was a tendency to suppose that in earlier
ages the agencies at work in modifying the earth’s
surface must have been far more violent than at
present. It was quite natural that people should
think so. The changes which geology revealed were
apt to be mighty changes ; layers of strata many miles
in area wrenched out of place and perhaps turned up
on edge, erratic blocks of stone carried thousands of
miles from home in glaciers more than a mile in thick-
ness, long stretches of sea-coast torn away by the rest-
less waves, mountains bearing on their summits the
telltale evidences that they had once been submerged
in the ocean; all these things seemed to speak of
gigantic displays of force like the wanton play of
Titans and Asuras in the ancient mythologies. Still
more was this view impressed upon the mind as the
wonders of paleontology became gradually revealed to
us. Here we were shown a succession of past ages,
during which the aspect of things was totally different
from what it is now. There was, for example, the age
when the great coal measures were deposited, char-
acterized by a dense and suffocating atmosphere, with
vegetation generally as exuberant as that of modern
Brazil, with colossal tree ferns abounding, but not a
single deciduous tree or flowering herb in existence.
That Carboniferous age had its day and vanished, leav-
ing its vegetable wealth locked up in the bowels of
the earth to heat the houses and propel the engines
of men in this age of ours. By and by there was a
Jurassic age, when reptiles were the lords of creation,
the bulkiest animals ever seen upon earth, yet with
brains too small to.do more than guide their clumsy
movements. These were the days when the Atlanto-

264 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

saurus, with body one hundred feet long and tail as
stout as a ship’s mast, dragged his unwieldy length
over the plains of Montana, while in every latitude
and clime you would come upon similar cold-blooded
dinosaurs, sometimes bigger than elephants, sometimes
as small as mice, stalking through the landscape or
burrowing underground, sitting upright, kangaroo
fashion, with heads near the tree-tops, flying about
in the gloaming with bat-like wings like a schooner’s
mainsail, or sailing in the seas with long crane-like
necks reared aloft above the water. Those were long
days, but they too passed, and the years are millions
since the last dinosaur perished. And then, to men-
tion just one more, we are introduced to an Eocene
world, about which the most striking things are the
appearance of deciduous trees alongside of the ever-
greens, the vast and varied development of beautiful
forms and colours simultaneously in the insect world
and in the world of flowers, and lastly, the presence
of sundry queer-looking, warm-blooded mammals cal-
culated to produce in an observer the state of mind of
old Polonius, for one would seem like a pig were it
not also something like a small donkey, another would
seem about midway between cat, rabbit, and monkey,
all of them being generalized types which have since
been variously specialized. I need not add that these
creatures, too, are all gone.

Now in view of such repeated and wholesale de-
struction of life, it was not strange that the geologists
of a hundred years ago should have imagined a succes-
sion of dire catastrophes involving a large part or the
whole of the earth’s surface. It was supposed that
the beginning and end of every great geologic period

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 265

such as the Carboniferous or the Jurassic or the
Eocene, here selected for mention, were characterized
by such catastrophes, which swept from the face of the
earth all existing forms of life. It was supposed that
the introduction of a new geologic period was marked
by a fresh introduction of living beings through some
inexplicable act of wholesale creation. There were
plenty of facts, indeed, which did not harmonize with
this view, such, for example, as the continuous exist-
ence of a certain kind of shell-fish known as trilobites
through many successive geologic periods. The
theory of catastrophes appeared to demand the assump-
tion that these trilobites were wiped out and created
over again half a dozen times; which was rather a
shock to men’s acquired notions of probability.

The complete overthrow of this doctrine of catas-
trophes was effected by Sir Charles Lyell, whose great
book was published in 1830. The difficulty with the
catastrophizers was that while talking glibly about
millions of years, they had not stopped to consider
what is meant by a million years when it takes the
shape of work accomplished. Suppose you were to
go to the Grand Cajon of the Colorado River, and
stand upon the fearful brink of the gorge, where it is
more than a mile in depth, looking down at the stream
like a tiny bright ribbon at the bottom, and were told
that this stream is wearing off from its rocky bed about
one-tenth of an inch every year, how your mind would
feel staggered in the attempt to estimate the length of
time it must have taken to excavate the whole of that
mighty gorge! Your first impulse would certainly be
to speak of quadrillions of years, or something of the
sort; yet a simple calculation shows that one million

266 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

of years would much more than suffice for the whole
process. Now all over the globe the myriad raindrops,
rushing in rivers to the sea, are with tireless industry
working to obliterate existing continents, and the
mean rate at which they are accomplishing this work
of denudation seems to be about one foot in three
thousand years. At this rate, and from the action of
rivers alone, it would take just about two million years
to wear the whole existing continent of Europe, with
all its huge mountain masses, down to the sea level.

It was the application of such considerations by Sir
Charles Lyell to the great problems of geology, taken
up one after another, that revolutionized the whole
study of the earth’s surface. It soon became clear that
the great catastrophes were entirely unnecessary to
account for the effects which we see; and for the first
time in the history of human thought we had brought
before us, on the most colossal scale, the truth that
there is nothing in the universe which accomplishes
so much as the incessant cumulative action of tiny
causes. This great thought has a significance that is
manifold and far-reaching; it penetrates the moral
world as well as the intellectual, and when thoroughly
grasped, it affects the conduct of our lives as power-
fully as the direction of our thoughts. It affords a
suggestive commentary upon that sublime scene in the
Old Testament which suggested to Mendelssohn the
greatest of his works, the scene in which Jehovah
reveals Himself, not in the fire nor the earthquake nor
the tempest, but in the still, small voice.

This theory of Lyell’s was at first known as Uni-
formitarianism as contrasted with Catastrophism. It
has everywhere won the field, but with sundry qualifi-

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 267

cations and explanations. It is not believed that
the earth’s surface was always so quiet as at present,
because it is an accepted opinion among men of
science that the earth was once a vaporous body
immensely hotter than at present and to some extent
self-luminous, as Jupiter and Saturn are to-day. Such
a state of things was a state of more or less curious
commotion such as may now be witnessed upon the
surfaces of those planets which are so big that they
still remain hot. Obviously, the cooling of the earth’s
surface, with the formation of a crust, must have en-
tailed increasing quiet, and it was of course not until
long after the formation of a solid crust with liquid
oceans that organic life could have begun to exist.
Even after the introduction of plants and animals, the
energies of the heated interior, imperfectly repressed,
broke forth from time to time in local catastrophes
upon the surface, though doubtless never in one that
could be called universal.

In early geologic ages there were doubtless earth-
quakes and floods more violent than any recorded in
history, but the chief agencies of change were the quiet
ones, and in general, if at any time you had visited the
earth, you would have found a peaceful scene where
gentle showers and quickening sunshine coaxed forth
the sprouting herbage, with worms crawling in the
ground and quadrupeds of some sort browsing on the
vegetation, and never would there just come a time
when you could say that the old age had gone and a
new one succeeded it. How does one generation of
men succeed another? The fathers are not swept
away in a body to make room for the children, but one
by one the old drop off and the young come on till a

268 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

day is reached when none of those remain that once
were here. How does some form of human speech
become extinct? About a hundred years ago an old
lady named Dolly Dentreath died in Cornwall. She
could speak the Cornish language; after her death
there was nobody that could. Thus quietly did the
living Cornish language become a dead language; and
in a like unobtrusive manner have been wrought most
of the new becomings which have changed and are
changing the earth.

The net result of all this study was that the same
kind of forces were at work a hundred million years
ago that are at work to-day, and that the lessons gained
from our familiar experiences may safely be applied to
the explanation of phenomena the most remote in time
as well as in space. In a still more striking degree
was this exemplified in the researches of Darwin.
When it became clear that there had been no universal
catastrophes, it was also clear that the persistence of
trilobites and other creatures unchanged through suc-
cessive periods simply showed that they had existed all
the time because the conditions happened to be favour-
able. But then it was further noticed that where in
some given territory one geologic period follows an-
other, the creatures of the latter period resemble those
of the earlier much more closely than the creatures of
some distant region. Thus, through many successive
periods South America has abounded in animals of
the general types of armadillo, sloth, and ant-eater.
For example, although the change from the mega-
therium of the Pliocene age to the modern sloth is
greater than the change from a Bengal tiger to kitty
that purrs on the hearth, yet after all the megatherium

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 269

is of the sloth type. But if megatherium was once
annihilated by some grand convulsion, after which a
fresh creation of mammals occurred in South America,
why should a sloth occur among the new creations
rather than a kangaroo or an elephant? Fora while
the advocates of special creations had their answer
ready. They said that every animal is best suited to
the conditions in which he lives, that he was created
in order to fit those conditions; therefore God has
repeatedly created anew the sloth type of animal in
South America because it has all along been best
fitted to the conditions to which animal life is subjected
there. But this ingenious argument was soon over-
thrown. It is true that every animal is more or less
adapted to the environment in which he lives, for
otherwise he would at once become extinct; but in
order to determine whether he is best adapted to that
environment, it remains to be seen whether he can
maintain himself in it against all comers. Now ina
great many instances he is far from able to do this.
New Zealand grass is fast disappearing before grass
introduced from Europe, and the marsupials of Aus-
tralia are being surely and steadily extirpated by the
introduction of species with widely different structure
but similar habits. Thus the marsupial rodent is van-
ishing before the European rat even faster than the
native black fellow is vanishing in presence of English-
men.

Now if the Creator followed the rule of putting
wild species only in the habitats best suited to them,
He would have put the European rat in Australia, and
not the marsupial rodent. This illustration shows how
far the old style of explanation failed’to suit the facts.

270 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

It is now understood that one of the principal factors
in establishing a high degree of vitality has been com-
petition for the means of supporting life. In the great
continental mass of Europe, Asia, and Africa the
forms of life have been most numerous and the com-
petition has been keenest; hence life, both animal and
vegetable, has been more strongly developed than else-
where; creatures have been produced that are tougher
and more resourceful than in other places; they have
the peculiar combinations of qualities that enable their
possessors to live more highly developed. Second in
this respect comes North America; then, very far
below it, because more isolated, comes South America;
lowest of all, because most isolated, comes Australasia.

Australian man is the lowest of the human species,
not having risen to the bow-and-arrow stage; the
Maori of New Zealand, a high type of barbarian, is not
indigenous, but a comparatively late arrival; in its
natural history generally Australasia has only reached
a point attained in the northern hemisphere two or
three geological periods ago. In the chalk period mar-
supials abounded in Europe, but they were long ago
extinguished by placental mammals of greater vitality,
and the same thing is now happening in Australasia.
The true reason for the resemblance between any
fauna and its predecessors in the same area is that
the later forms are the slightly modified descendants
of the earlier forms. Thus there arose the suspicion
that the millions of separate acts of creation once
thought necessary to account for the specific forms of
plants and animals were as unnecessary and improb-
able as the series of convulsions formerly imagined as
the causes of geological change. What could those

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 271

acts of creation have been? Let us try to imagine
one. We need not dread too close an approach to
detail. This is a world of detail; details, in short, are
what it consists of. Try, then, to imagine the special
creation of a lobster. Was there ever a particular
moment when the protein-molecules spontaneously
rushed together from all points of the compass and
aggregated themselves into a complicated system of
tissues, fleshy, fatty, vitreous, and calcareous, and fur-
thermore took on the forms of divers organs, diges-
tive, sensitive, and locomotive, until that marvellous
creature, the lobster, might have been seen in his per-
fection where a moment before there was absolute
vacancy? One may not say that such a thing is im-
possible, but it surely does not commend itself to the
modern mind as altogether probable. Yet in what
other way we are to think of special creation is not
easy to point out, unless we are prepared to assent to
the negro preacher who graphically described the
Creator as moulding Adam out of damp clay and set-
ting him up against the fence to dry. The advocates
of special creations naturally shrank from attempts to
clothe their hypothesis with details, and deemed it
safer, as well as more reverent, to een it into the
regions of the unknown.

Now what Darwin did was the same sort of thing
that Newton and Lyell had done. He asked aa?
if there was not some simple and familiar cause now
operating to modify plants and animals which could
be shown to have been in operation through past ages;
and furthermore, if such a cause could not be proved
adequate to bring about truly specific changes. We
are familiar with the production of new breeds of

272 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

horses and cattle, pigeons and fowl, and countless
fruits and flowers, through human agency. How is
this done? Simply through selection. I need not
follow the steps by which Darwin reached his conclu-
sions. Selection by man could not account for the
origin of species, but the leap of inference which Dar-
win took from human selection to natural selection,
the masterly way in which he proved that the survival
of favoured individuals in the struggle for existence
must operate as a process of selection, incessant, ubiqui-
tous and unavoidable, so that all living things are from
birth to death under its sway; this was of course one
of the most memorable achievements of the human
mind. It was in the highest sense poetic work, intro-
ducing mankind to a new world of thought. But let
us not fail to observe that its scientific character lay in
its appealing to familiar agencies to assist in interpret-
ing the unknown. Just how far Darwin’s theory of
natural selection covered the whole ground of the phe-
nomena to be explained is still a question. I believe
the ultimate verdict will be that it was far from cover-
ing the whole ground; but it covered so much ground,
it was substantiated and verified in such a host of
cases, as to win general assent to the doctrine of evo-
lution which had before 1860 been accepted only by a
comparatively few leading minds.

In this connection let me for the thousandth time
point out the fallacy of the common notion that we
owe to Charles Darwin the doctrine of evolution.
Nothing of the sort. On the other hand, there were
large portions of the general theory of evolution
which Darwin did not even understand. His theory
of descent by modifications through the agency of

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE boop 9)

natural selection was an immensely important contri-
bution to the doctrine of evolution, but it should no
more be confounded with that doctrine than Lyell’s
geology or the Newtonian astronomy should be con-
founded with it.

If Herbert Spencer had not lived in the nineteenth
century, although the age would have been full of
illustrations of evolution, contributed by Darwin and
others, yet in all probability such a thing as the doc-
trine of evolution would not have been heard of.
What, then, is the central pith of the doctrine of
evolution? It is simply this: That the changes that
are going on throughout the universe, so far as our
scientific methods enable us to discern and follow
them, are not chaotic or unrelated, but follow an intel-
ligible course from one state of things toward another:
and more particularly, that the course which they fol-
low is like that which goes on during the development
of an ovum into a mature animal. This, I say, is the
central pith of the doctrine of evolution. It started
in the study of embryology, a department in which
Darwin had but little first-hand knowledge. Spen-
cer’s forerunner was the great Esthonian naturalist,
Carl Ernest von Baer, who published in 1829 a won-
derful book generalizing the results of observation up
to that time on the embryology of a great many kinds
of animals. Curiously enough, von Baer called this
book a “ History of Evolution,” although neither then,
nor at any time down to his death, was he an evolu-
tionist in our sense of the word. So far from it was
he that in his later years he persistently refused to
accept Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Now in studying the development of an individual

2T

274 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

ovum as exemplified in a thousand different species
of animals, von Baer arrived at a group of technical
formulas so general that they cover and describe with
accuracy the series of changes that occur in all these
cases. In other words, he made a general statement
of the law of development for all physiological species.
Now Spencer's great achievement was to prove that
von Baer’s law of development, with sundry modifi-
cations, applies to the succession of phenomena in the
whole universe so far as known to us.

Spencer took the development of the solar system
according to the theories of Kant and Laplace, he took
the geologic development of the earth according to the
school of Lyell, he took the development of plant and
animal life upon the earth’s surface according to Lin-
nzeus and Cuvier, supplemented and rectified by Hooker
and Huxley, and he showed that all these multifarious
and apparently unrelated phenomena have through
countless ages been proceeding according to the very
law which expresses the development of dn individual
embryo. In addition to this, Spencer furnished an
especially elaborate illustration of his theory in a trea-
tise upon psychology in which he traced the evolution
of mind from the first appearance of rudimentary nerve
systems in creatures as low as starfishes up to the most
abstruse and complex operations of human intelli-
gence, and he showed that throughout this vast region
the phenomena conformed to his law. This was by
far the profoundest special research that has ever been
made on the subject of evolution, and it was published
four years before Spencer had ever heard of Darwin’s
theory of natural selection.

In those days Spencer’s attitude toward such ques-

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 275

tions was much more Lamarckian than Darwinian;
that is to say, he attributed far greater importance to
such agencies as the cumulative effects of use and
disuse than Darwin ever did; but when Darwin’s
great work appeared, Spencer cordially welcomed
him as a most powerful auxiliary. Spencer’s next
achievement was to point out some of the most
essential features in the development of mankind
as socially organized, and to make it practically
certain that with the further advance of knowledge
this group of phenomena also will be embraced under
the one great law of evolution. And there was still
one thing more which Spencer may fairly be said to
have accomplished. The generalization of the meta-
morphosis of forces which was begun a century ago by
Count Rumford when he recognized heat as a mode of
molecular motion was consummated about the middle
of the century, when Dr. Joule showed mathematically
just how much heat is equivalent to just how much
visible motion, and when the researches of Helmholtz,
Mayer, and Faraday completed the grand demonstra-
tion that light and heat and magnetism and electricity
and visible motion are all interchangeable one into the
other, and are continually thus interchanging from
moment to moment.

Now Spencer showed that the universal process
of evolution as described in his formula not only
conforms to the development of an individual life as
generalized by von Baer, but is itself an inevitable
consequence of the perpetual metamorphosis of energy
that was detected by the great thinkers above
named, from Rumford to Helmholtz. Had he only
accomplished the former part of the task, his place in

276 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

the nineteenth century would have been that of a
greater Kepler; as it is, his place is undoubtedly that of
a greater Newton. The achievement is so stupendous
that that of Darwin is fairly dwarfed in comparison.
Now in Spencer’s law of evolution the unification of
nature is carried to something like completeness. It
shows us that the truth which began to be discerned
when Newton’s mind took the first great leap into the
celestial spaces is a universal truth. It is not to be
supposed that as yet we have more than crossed the
threshold of the temple of science. We have hitherto
simply been finding out the way to get the first peep
into its mysteries; yet in that first peep we get a
steady gleam which assures us that all things in the
universe are parts of a single dramatic scheme, and that
the agencies concerned everywhere, far and near, are
interpretable in the same way that we interpret the
most familiar facts of daily life. Just how far the real-
ization of this truth has affected the thought and life
of our age in its details would be difficult to tell. It
would be entirely incorrect to say that the unification
of nature in the minds of thinkers of the present day
is a consequence of Spencer's generalizations. The
correct way of stating the case would be to say that
Spencer’s generalizations give us the complete and
scientific statement of a truth which in more or less
vague and imperfect shape permeates the intellectual
atmosphere of our time.

It isnot from the labours of any one thinker or from
researches in any one branch of science that we get the
conception of a unified nature, but it is a result of
the resistless momentum of scientific inquiry during the
past two centuries. Such changes in the intellectual

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 277

atmosphere often work great and unsuspected results.
Take, for example, the disappearance of the belief in
witchcraft. From prehistoric times down to the last
quarter of the seventeenth century the entire human
race took witchcraft for granted; to-day it has com-
pletely disappeared from the thoughts of educated
people in civilized countries. What has caused the
change? Probably no human belief has so much re-
corded testimony in its favour, if we consider quantity
merely, as the belief in witchcraft; and certainly
nobody has ever refuted all that testimony. Yet the
human mind which once welcomed certain kinds of
evidence has now become incurably inhospitable to
them. When at Ipswich, in England, in 1664, an old
woman named Rose Cullender muttered threats against
a passing teamster and half an hour later his cart got
stuck in passing through a gate, one of the most
learned judges in England considered this sufficient
proof that Rose had bewitched the gate, and she was
accordingly hanged. To this kind of reasoning the
whole community assented, except half a dozen eccen-
tric sceptics. To-day you laugh at such so-called evi-
dence, and your laugh shows that your mind has
become utterly inhospitable to it. What has caused
the change? Might it be Newton’s law of gravitation ?
Directly, perhaps, no; yet in a certain sense, yes.
The habit of appealing to known and familiar agencies
instead of remote and fancied ones in order to explain
phenomena is a habit which has been growing upon
the civilized mind very rapidly since the seventeenth
century, and every triumph, great and small, which that
habit has achieved has helped to strengthen it in many
more ways than we can detect and point out. The

278 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

swift and astonishing development of science since
Newton’s time, the repeated discovery of new truths,
the frequent invention of new industrial devices, the
often renewed triumph of mind over matter, due sim-
ply to that wholesome habit, has diffused it in more
or less strength throughout all civilized communities.
In short, we bring to the whole business of life minds
predisposed very differently from what they were two
centuries ago, and one of the results is the disappear-
ance of witchcraft from our thoughts. It has not been
crushed by a battery of arguments; it has simply been
dropped out in cold neglect, as a dead political issue
is dropped out of our campaign platforms without a
passing word of respect.

Now with regard to some of the scientific truths,

methods, and habits which I have alluded to as char-
acteristic of the theory of evolution and its pioneers,
it is obvious that they have begun to permeate the
thought of our time in many directions. Take, for
example, the writing of history. There was a time
when historians dealt mainly in personal details, in the
intrigues of courts and in battles and sieges; when
the study of some conspicuous personality like Luther
or Napoleon was supposed to suffice for the under-
standing of the historic movements of his time; when
it could be said of sundry decisive battles that a con-
trary event would have essentially altered the direction
of human development through all subsequent ages;
when some writers even went so far as to declare that
the biographies of all great men lumped together would
be equivalent to a history of mankind. Throughout
this whole school of writing you may detect that fond-
ness for the unusual and catastrophic that used to

*

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 279

characterize the scientific mind when untrained in
modern methods and results.

Now the“past generation has seen the method of
treating history quite revolutionized. In the study of
political institutions and economic conditions we are
endeavouring to understand the cumulative action of
minute but incessant causes such as we see in opera-
tion around us. We endeavour to carry to the inter-
pretation of past ages the experience derived from our
own; and knowing that nothing is more treacherous
than hasty generalizations from analogy, we devote to
the institutions and conditions of past ages and our
own a study of most exacting and microscopic minute-
ness, in order that we may guard against error in our
conclusions.

The result is a very considerable revolution in our
opinions of the past and our feelings toward it, while
an enormous mass of facts that our grandfathers
would have called insufferably tedious have be-
come invested for us with absorbing interest. Or, to
cite something more immediately practical, if you
consider the projects which men have in various
ages entertained for reforming society, you will find
that along with inexperience goes a naive faith that
some sovereign decree or some act of parliament or
some cunningly devised constitution or some happily
planned referendum will at once accomplish the
desired result. But cold, hard experience soon shows -
that sovereign edicts may be neglected, that it is far
easier to make statutes than to enforce them, and that
in such a delicate and complex structure as that of
society the operation of laws and constitutions is liable
to differ very widely from what was anticipated. The

280 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

great difficulty of securing wise legislation is illustrated
by the fact that in almost all statute books, nine-tenths
of the legislation comes under the class which might
be introduced as an act to repeal an act. Continually
we find men asserting in one breath that human nature
is always the same, and in the next moment assuming
that it may be extensively remodelled by some happy
feat of legislation. Now the mental habits that come
from a study of evolution lead us to very different
views upon such matters. We can produce abundant
evidence to show that human nature is not always the
same, while we also recognize that it cannot be sud-
denly or violently modified by any governmental might
or cunning. We recognize that one must not expect
to take a mass of poor units and organize them into an
excellent sum total. We do not imagine that a com-
munity of Hottentots would be particularly benefited
by our federal constitution any more than they would
feel comfortable in our clothes. Our experience makes
us feel that human nature admits of very considerable
improvement, but that this can be effected only through
the slow and cumulative effect of countless reactions of
individual experience upon individual character, and
that therefore while the millennium is sure to come
sooner or later, it can neither be bullied nor coaxed into
coming prematurely. It seems to me that this mental
attitude toward social reforms has been notably
strengthened and diffused within recent years.

A word must be said in conclusion about the effects
of recent science upon man’s view of his relation to
the universe. To untrained minds in all ages the sub-
stitution of a familiar and calculable agency for one
remote and incalculable has had an atheistic look, and

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 281

consequently it has had a tendency either to frighten
honest inquirers or to induce their neighbours to burn
them, and this state of things has undoubtedly been a
drawback on the progress of mankind. It was said of
Pythagoras that when he discovered his famous propo-
sition about triangles which sixty generations of school-
boys have known as the Forty-seventh in the first
book of Euclid, he celebrated his discovery by sacri-
ficing a hundred oxen to Apollo. “From that time to
this,” exclaims Ludwig Buechner, with a bitter sneer
on his lips, “from that time to this, whenever a new
truth in science is discovered, all oxen bellow with
fright!” For all its brutality, there is clear pith and
humour in this remark; but it does not express the
proper frame of mind in which to contemplate the
narrowness of the men of bygone days.

We ought so far to sympathize with them as to see
that at the first glance it must have seemed very de-
grading to be told that man’s terrestrial habitat was an
attendant upon the sun and not the sun upon the earth;
nor can we wonder that when Newton appealed to apple
and sling, it should have occurred to many people that
he was dethroning God and putting gravitation
in His place. That sort of thing went on until
scientific students of nature in many cases ac-
knowledged the imputation. Being good physicists,
but weak philosophers, they acknowledged the charge
and retorted: “What then? No matter what be-
comes of religion, we must abide by the evidence
before us; we must follow Truth, though she lead us
to Hades.” Such was the atheistic state of mind
illustrated by the French materialists of the eighteenth
century, and they have had a considerable following

282 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

throughout most of the nineteenth in nearly all civil-
ized countries. One result of this state of mind was
Comte’s Philosophy of Positivism, which aimed at or-
ganizing scientific truths without reference to any ulte-
rior implications, which was like the ostrich burying its
head in the sand and asseverating, “ There is no world
save that which I see.” Another form which it took
was agnosticism, or the simple, weary refusal to deal
with subjects inaccessible to the ordinary methods of
scientific proof. Out of this mental attitude came
a disposition which reached its height toward the mid-
dle of the century, to deal with sciences merely as
groups of disconnected facts which men might gather
and tabulate very much as boys and girls collect post-
age stamps. The acme of glory in science would be
thus attained when you had described some weed
or insect hitherto unknown or undistinguished, and
were entitled to apply to it some Greek name at which
Aristotle would have shuddered, with your own family
name attached, in the Latin genitive case. It was
this feeling which led the French Academy of Sciences
some thirty years ago to elect for a new member some
Scandinavian naturalist, whose name I forget, instead
of Charles Darwin, inasmuch as the former had
described three or four new bugs while the latter
was only a constructor of theories. In the same
mood I remember a discussion in a certain learned
historical society as to whether the late John Richard
Green could properly be called a historian, inasmuch
as he had apparently neither discovered nor edited any
new documents, but had only described the life of a
great people.

Now one result of the unification of nature of which

EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 283

I have been speaking is that this scrappy, dry-as-dust
method of studying things is falling into comparative
disfavour. It was a very prompt and striking result of
the publication of Darwin’s “ Origin of Species” that
it supplied a new stimulus to all the naturalists in the
world. Immediately their studies of plants and ani-
mals were brought to bear upon the question, whether
the facts known to them tended to prove or disprove
Darwin’s views; and they suddenly found that nature
had become far more interesting than when studied in
the spirit of the stamp collector.

But still more, the vast sweep of Spencer’s inquiries
has brought it home to us at every turn that the os-
trich method of hiding our heads and pretending that
we see all that there is to be seen is no longer tenable.
Many a time I have heard Spencer conclude some dis-
cussion by saying, “ Thus you see it is ever so; there
is no physical problem whatever which does not soon
land us in a metaphysical problem that we can neither
solve nor elude.” In this last word we have the justifi-
cation for those younger thinkers who are not con-
tented to stop just where Spencer felt obliged to. As
the startling disclosures of the past century become
assimilated in our mental structure, we see that man is
now justified in feeling himself as never before a part
of nature, that the universe is no inhospitable wander-
ing-place, but his own home; that the mighty sweep
of its events from age to age are but the working out
of a cosmic drama in which his part is the leading one;
and that all is an endless manifestation of one all-per-
vading creative Power, Protean in its myriad phases,
yet essentially similar to the conscious soul within us.
To these views Darwinism powerfully contributed

284 EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE

when it showed the ultimate welfare of a species to be
the chief determining factor in selecting such modifi-
cations as would insure its survival. Darwinism
certainly displaced many time-honoured theological
interpretations, but at this point it brought back ten
times as much theology as it ever displaced. So, too,
that line of researches first set forth in my “ Cosmic
Philosophy,” which exhibit man as the terminal figure
in the long series of development, and insist upon the
increasing subordination of material life to spiritual
life, have the same implication. It seems to me that
the most important effect which the doctrine of evo-
lution is having is that of deepening and enlarging
man’s conceptions of religious truth. Forty years ago
it would have seemed incredible that sectarian bitter-
ness should have so greatly diminished and Christian
charity so hopefully increased as we now see to have
been the case, and I believe this is largely because
in those days when science was pursued in the mood
of the stamp collector, the religious world also was
setting too much value upon things non-essential,
attaching too much importance to the husks and
integuments of religious truth rather than to its eter-
nal spiritual essence. The change that we have seen
has been in the direction of a life far higher and
broader, far sweeter, more wholesome, and more hope-
ful than of old. And for this we have largely to thank
those methods of study that are teaching us for the
first time how to look upon nature as an organic
whole. |

ee he “
" Lette ip i,

Xx

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

X

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

Amonc the folk-tales which amuse our children and
afford matter of speculation for philosophers, few are
more widely known than the story of “The Town
Musicians of Bremen,” which is Number 27 of the
Grimm collection, the story that tells how a party of
robbers, who had cosily ensconced themselves in a house
in the forest, were driven forth in a panic by the music
of a quartet of beasts that brayed, barked, caterwauled,
and crowed in weird and grewsome concert. The
story is perhaps most generally known from the
Grimm version, but it is found in one shape or another
in all the Teutonic and Keltic parts of Europe. It
appears as indigenous in Ireland, under the title of
“Jack and his Comrades,” where some features are
added which bring it within the large class of stories
relating to grateful beasts. Jack is the young hero
who figures so conspicuously in nursery literature, who
starts out to seek his fortune. He drags the ass out
of a bog in which he is floundering, and afterward
rescues the dog from some naughty boys who are
tormenting him. The accession of the cat to the
company is marked by no special adventure, but the
cock is saved by the dog’s prowess from the clutches
of a red fox which is carrying it off. When they all
reach the house in the wood, it is Jack who creeps up

287

288 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

to the window and discovers six robbers drinking
whiskey punch. He listens to their talk, and overhears
how they lately bagged a fine booty at Lord Dun-
lavin’s, with the connivance of the gatekeeper. The
house is then taken by storm, as in the German ver-
sion, and when the bravest robber returns in the dark
he meets with a similar ill-reception. The stolen
treasure is all found secreted in the house, and next
morning Jack loads it on to the donkey, and they pro-
ceed to Lord Dunlavin’s castle. The treasure is
restored, the gatekeeper is hanged, the faithful beasts
get well provided for in the kitchen and farm-yard, and
Jack marries the lord’s only daughter, and eventually
succeeds to the earldom.

Taken as a whole, this fantastic story may not have
any consistent mythological significance, but it has
certainly been pieced together out of genuine mythical
conceptions. It is impossible to read it without being
reminded of the lame ass in the Zend Yagna, who by
his fearful braying terrifies the night monsters and
keeps them away from the sacred oma, or drink of
the gods. In the Veda this business of guarding the
soma is intrusted not to an ass, but to a centaur or
gandharva. The meaning of these creatures is well
enough understood. The Vedic ganxdharvas, corre-
sponding to the Greek kevravoo, were cloud deities,
who, among other accomplishments, were skilful per-
formers on the kettledrum; and their musical per-
formances, as well as the braying of the ass in the
Zendavesta, appear to have represented neither more
nor less than the thunder with which Indra terrified
the Panis, or night robbers. The ass, indeed, plays a
considerable part in Hindu mythology; and the pro-

eee

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 289

tection of treasure and intimidation of thieves is one
of his regular mythical functions... Now when we con-
sider the close resemblance between this function of
the ass in Hindu mythology and the part which he
plays in the Kelto-Teutonic legend, does it not seem
altogether probable that this prominent idea in the
grotesque and homely story—the idea of robbers
frightened by a donkey’s voice — had its origin in an
Old Aryan mythical conception? If this be the case,
—even without considering the other members of the
quartet, albeit they have all figured very conspicu-
ously in divers Aryan myths,—we are bound to ac-
count for the wide diffusion of the story by supposing
that it is a very old tradition, and has not been passed
about in recent times from one Aryan people to
another.

If our view were restricted to this story alone, how-
ever, perhaps we could not make out a very strong
case for it as illustrating an early community of Aryan
tradition. It is no doubt possible, for example, that
the story may have been originally pieced together
out of mythical materials by some Teutonic story-teller,
and may have been transmitted into Britain by Uncle
Toby’s armies in Flanders, or in any other of a thou-
sand ways; for the social intercourse between Kelts
and Teutons has always been very close. Indeed, I
am inclined to think that with this particular story
such was the case. In both versions the members of
the quartet are the very same animals, and the sequence
of events is so closely parallel as to raise a very strong
presumption that one was directly based upon the
other.

1 See Gubernatis, “ Zodlogical Mythology,” I. 370-379.

2U

290 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

Some scholars think that we may account in this
way for the greater part of the resemblances among
folk-tales in different parts of Europe, and in support
of their opinion they allege the immense popularity, in
the Middle Ages, of the versions of the Pantcha
Tantra and the Seven Wise Masters. But such an
opinion seems based on altogether too narrow a view
of the subject. In the first place, the stories which
have come into Europe through the Seven Wise Mas-
ters and the versions of the Pantcha Tantra are but a
drop in the bucket, when compared with the vast
mythical lore which has been taken down from the
lips of the common people within the last fifty years.
For the greater part of this mythical lore no imagin-
able literary source can be pointed out. Inthe second
place, however practicable this theory of what we may
call “lateral transmission” might seem if applied only
to one legend, like the story of the donkey and his
friends, above cited, it breaks down utterly when we
try to apply it to the entire folk-lore of any one people.
Granting that the Scotch and Irish Kelts may have
learned this particular story from some German source,
we have yet to remember that four-fifths of Scoto-Irish
folk-lore is essentially similar to the folk-lore of Ger-
many; and shall we say that Scotch and Irish nurses
never told nursery tales until they were instructed, in
some way or other, from a German source? We seem
here to get very near to a veductio ad absurdum ; but
the case is made immeasurably worse when we reflect
that it is not with two or three but with twenty or
thirty different Aryan peoples, and throughout more
than a hundred distinct areas, that this remarkable
community of popular tradition occurs. Is it in any

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 291

way credible that one of these groups of people should
have been obliged to go to some other group to get
its nursery tales? Or, to put the question more
forcibly, is it at all credible that any one group should
have been so differently constituted from the rest, in
regard to the making of folk-lore, that it should have
enjoyed a monopoly of this kind of invention? Yet,
unless we feel prepared to defend some such extreme
position as this, there appears to be nothing for us to
do but to admit that all the Aryan people have gone on
from the outset with their own native folk-lore.

Here and there, no doubt, they have acquired new
stories from one another, and the instances of such cross-
transmission have probably been very numerous; but
with regard to the great body of their fireside traditions
we may Safely assert, on general principles of common
sense, that it has been indigenous. When we find
that not two or three but two or three thousand
nursery-tales are common to Ireland and Russia, to
Norway and Hindustan, we may feel pretty sure that
the gist of these tales, their substratum of genuine
myth, was all contained in Old Aryan folk-lore in the
times when there was but one Old Aryan language
and culture.

In support of this view we have not only this gen-
eral probability, sustained by the difficulty of adopting
any alternative: we have also the demonstrated fact
that the whole structure of Aryan speech, with the
culture that it implies, however multiform it is to-day,
has been traced back to an era of uniformity. Quite
independently of our study of myths and legends, we
know that there was once a time when a part of the
common ancestors of the Englishman, the Russian,

292 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

and the Hindu formed but one single people; and
we know that English words are like Russian and Hin-
dustani words because they have been handed down
by tradition from a common speech, and for no other
reason, occult or plausible. Knowing this to be so, is
it not obvious that the conditions of the case quite
cover also the case of nursery tales? Children learn
the adventures of Little Bo-Peep and Jack the Giant-
Killer precisely as they learn the words of their mother
tongue; and if the power of tradition is sufficient to
make us say “three” in America to-day just because
our ancesters said “tri” forty centuries ago in some
such country as Lithuania, why should not the same
conservative habit insure a similar duration to the
rhymes and stories with which infancy is soothed and
delighted ?

Our position is further strengthened when we duly
consider the significant fact that, great as is the num-
ber of entirely similar s¢orzes which can be brought to-
gether from the remotest corners of the Indo-European
world, the number of similar mythical zzczdents is far
greater. The wide diffusion of such stories as “ Cin-
derella” and “ Faithful John” is in itself a striking
phenomenon. But after all, the main point is that no
matter how endlessly diversified the great mass of
Aryan nursery tales may appear on a superficial view,
they are nevertheless all made up of a few fundamental
incidents, which recur again and again in a bewilder-
ing variety of combinations. Thus the conception of
grateful beasts, already noticed, appears in hundreds
of stories, its simplest version being the familiar legend
of Andronicus, who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw,
nd is long afterward spared by the same lion in the

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 293,

amphitheatre. Hardly less common is the notion of
a man whose life depends on the duration or integrity
of something external to him, as the existence of
Meleagros was to be determined by the burning of a
log. The idea of a Delilah-like woman, who by amor-
ous wheedling extorts the secret of her lover’s invul-
nerability, is equally widespread. And the conception
of human beings turned into stone by an enchanter’s
spell is continually repeated, from the classic victims
of the Gorgon to the brothers of Parizade in the
Arabian Nights.

These elements are neatly blended in the South
Indian legend of the magician Punchkin, who turned
into stone six daughters of a rajah, with their hus-
bands, and incarcerated the youngest daughter in a
tower until she should make up her mind to marry
him. He forgot, however, to enchant the baby son
of this youngest daughter, who years afterward, when
grown to manhood, discovered his mother in the
tower, and laid a plot for Punchkin’s destruction.
The princess gives Punchkin to understand that she
will probably marry him if he will tell her the secret
of his immortality. After two or three futile attempts
to hoodwink his treacherous charmer, he confesses that
his life is bound up with that of a little green parrot
concealed under six jars of water in the midst of a
jungle a hundred thousand miles distant. On his
journey thither, the young prince rescues some eaglets
from a serpent, and they reward him by carrying him
on their crossed wings out of the reach of the dragons
who guard the jungle. As he seizes the parrot, Punch-
kin roars for mercy, and immediately sets at liberty all
the victims of the enchantment; but as soon as this

294 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

has been done the prince wrings the parrot’s neck, and
the magician dies.

From the Deccan to Argyleshire this story is told,
with hardly any variation, the most familiar version of
it being the Norse tale of “The Giant who had no
Heart in his Body.” But we are now looking at these
stories analytically, and what we have chiefly to notice
are the ubiquity, the persistence, and the manifold re-
combinations of the mythical incidents. These points
are well illustrated in the Russian legend of “ Marya
Morevna,” that is, ‘‘ Mary, Daughter of the Sea.” This
beautiful princess marries Prince Ivan, — the everlast-
ing Jack or Odysseus of popular tradition, whom the
wise dawn goddess ever favours, and insures him ulti-
mate success. Marya Morevna is an Amazon, like
Artemis and Brynhild, and after the honeymoon is
over the impulse to go out and fight becomes irresist-
ible. Ivan is left in charge of the house, and may do
whatever he likes except to look into “that closet
there.” This incident you have met with in the stories
of “ Bluebeard” and the “ Third Royal Mendicant” in
the Arabian Nights, and there is hardly any limit to its
recurrence. Of course, the moment his wife is out of
the house, Ivan goes straight to the closet, and there
he finds Koshchei the Deathless, fettered by twelve
strong chains. Koshchei pleads piteously for some

water, as he has not tasted a drop for ten years; but —

after the charitable Ivan has given him three bucket-
fuls, the malignant giant breaks his chains like cob-
webs, and flies out of the window in a whirlwind, and
overtakes Marya Morevna, and carries her home a pris-
oner. To recount all the adventures of Ivan while
seeking his wife would be to encumber ourselves too

——_

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 295

heavily with mythical incident. He finds her several
times, and carries her off; but Koshchei the Death-
less has a magic horse, belonging to the same breed
with Pegasus, the horses of Achilleus, the enchanted
steed of the Arabian Nights, and the valiant hip-
pogriff of Ariosto, and with this wonderful horse
Koshchei always overtakes and baffles the fugitives.
Prince Ivan’s game is hopeless unless he can find out
where Koshchei obtained his incomparable steed. By
dint of industrious coaxing Marya Morevna learns that
there is a Baba Yaga, or witch, who lives beyond a
river of fire, and keeps plenty of mares; one time
Koshchei tended the mares for three days without los-
ing any, and the witch gave him a foal for his services.
The way to get across the fiery river was to wave a
certain magic handkerchief, when a lofty but narrow
bridge would instantly span the stream. Here we
have Es-Sirat, the rainbow bridge of the Moslem, over
which the good pass safely to heaven, while the wicked
fall into the flames of hell below. Marya Morevna
obtained the handkerchief, and so Ivan contrived to
get across the river. Now comes the grateful-beast
incident. The prince is faint with hunger, and is suc-
cessively tempted by a chicken, a bit of honeycomb,
and a lion’s cub; but on the intercession of the old
hen, the queen bee, and the lioness, he refrains from
meddling with their treasures, and arrives half starved
at the horrible hut of the Baba Yaga, enclosed within
a circle of twelve poles, on eleven of which are stuck
human heads. The old hag gives him the mares to
look after, with the friendly warning that if he loses a
single one he needn't feel annoyed at finding his own
head stuck on the twelfth pole. On each of the three

296 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

days the mares scamper off in all directions, leaving
Ivan in despair; but each night they are safely driven
home, first by a flock of outlandish birds, next by a
lot of wild beasts, and lastly by a swarm of angry bees.
In the dead of night Prince Ivan laid hands on a
magic colt, and rode off on it across the fairy bridge.
The Baba Yaga followed in hot pursuit, driving along
in an iron mortar, brushing the trail with a broom,
and sweeping cobwebs from the sky, like the “old
woman, whither so high,” of our own nurseries. She
drove fearlessly on to the bridge, but when she was
midway it broke in two, and a savage death overtook
her in the fiery stream. Then all was up with Kosh-
chei the Deathless, in spite of his surname; for straight-
way came Ivan and carried off Marya Morevna on his
heroic steed; and when Koshchei caught up with
them they just cracked his skull, and built a funeral
pyre, and burned him to ashes on it.

Of the mythical incidents with which this wild
legend is crowded, we must go back and pick up one
or two which we could not conveniently notice on the
way. We observed that Marya Morevna is like the
Norse Brynhild in her character of an Amazon; she is
like her also in being separated from her lover, who
has to go through long wanderings and many trials
before he can recover her. The theme, with many
variations, is most elaborately worked out in the classic
story of Odysseus, and it is familiar to every one in the
Arabian tales of “ Beder and Johara” and of “ Kama-
ralzaman and Budoor.” Another and more curious
feature is the sudden recovery of gigantic strength by
Koshchei the Deathless as soon as he has taken a
drink of water. This notion is illustrated in many

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 297

Aryan tales, but in none more forcibly than in the
Bohemian story of “ Yanechek * and the Water Demon.”
A poor widow’s mischievous boy having been drowned,
the mother some time after succeeds in capturing the
water demon while he is out of his element, roaming
about on land. She drags him home to her hut,
and ties him tight with a rope nine times plaited, and
builds a fearful fire in the oven, which so scorches and
torments the fiend that he is prevailed upon to tell her
how to get down into the water kingdom and release
her Yanechek. Everything succeeds until Yanechek
is restored to the dry land, and learns how his enemy
is tied hand and foot in the hut. Overcome with a
silly desire for revenge, he runs home, picks up a sharp
hatchet, and throws it at the water demon, thinking to
split his head open and finish him. But the horrible
fiend, changing suddenly into a huge black dog, jumps
aside as the axe descends, and the sharp edge falls on
the ninefold plaited rope and severs it. The dog, freed
from his fetters, springs to the empty water-jug stand-
ing on the table, and thrusting in his paw succeeds in
touching one wet drop that remained at the bottom.
Instantly, then, the demon recovered his strength, and
the drop of water became an overwhelming torrent,
that swallowed up Yanechek, and his mother, and the
house, and the region round about, and went off roar-
ing down the hillside, leaving nothing but a dark and
gloomy pool, which is there to this day, at that self-
same spot in Bohemia, with the legend still hovering
about it.

1 The diminutive Vanechek means “Johnny.” The name of the grand
Bohemian actress, Fanny /anauschek, would seem to be equivalent to the
English name “ Johnson.”

298 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

These examples may suffice to illustrate what is
meant when it is said that the thousands of stories
which constitute the body of Aryan folk-lore are made
up of a few mythical incidents combined in an endless
variety of ways. The perfect freedom with which the
common stock of mythical ideas is handled in the dif-
ferent stories does not seem consistent with the notion
that as a general thing one story has been copied from
another, or handed over by any literary process from
one people to another. On the other hand, this free-
dom is what one would expect to find in stories passed
from mouth to mouth, careful to preserve the scattered
leading motives based on immemorial tradition, but
grouping the incidents in as many fresh ways as musi-
cians in their melodies combine the notes of the scale.

That there has been a very large amount of copying
and of lateral transmission I am not for a moment con-
cerned to deny. But such lateral transmission does
not suffice to account for the great stock of mythical
ideas common to the civilized peoples of Europe and
a large part of Asia. An immemorial community of
tradition is needed for this. It has been a foible of
many writers on mythology to apply some one favour-
ite method of explanation to everything, to try to open
all the doors in the enchanted castle of folk-lore with
the same little key. Futile attempts of this sort have
too often thrown discredit upon the study of myths
and folk-tales. The subject is too rich in its complex-
ity to admit of such treatment. In an essay written a
quarter of a century ago, entitled “Werewolves and
Swan Maidens,” I tried to show how a great number
of utterly different circumstances might combine to
generate a single group of superstitions and tales.

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 299

Euhemerism was in the main an unsound theory, but
it surely accounts for some things. All myths are not
stories of the Sun and the Dawn, or of the Rain-cloud
and the Lightning, but a great many myths are. The
solar theory explains some things, distorted history ex-
plains others, reminiscences of savage custom explains
others. In such complex ways, in the dim prehistoric
dawn of human intelligence, divers mythical ideas origi-
nated, like the personification of the sun as an archer,
or a frog, or the lightning as a snake. These simpler
ideas, the rudimentary elements of folk-tales, occur all
over the world and among races in widely different
stages of culture. They are evidently an inheritance
from very low stages of barbarism, and their possession
by different and remote peoples is no proof of any com-
munity of tradition, except in so far as it shows that
all civilized peoples have at some time or other passed
through similar stages of barbaric thought. There is
no reason why the simpler mythical ideas should not
be originated independently by different people, over
and over again. For example, the daily repetition of
the sun’s course across the sky, with very small varia-
tion, aroused men’s curiosity in a very primitive stage
of culture. Why should that bright strong creature
always go in the same path? It was natural for sav-
ages to answer such a question by inventing stories of
some ancestral warrior that once caught the sun ina
net or with a big hook and forced it ever afterward to
do his bidding. Thus originated the Sun-catcher
myths which we find in such numbers among bar-
barous and savage peoples in America and Polynesia.
The Greek, in his stories of Herakles performing
superhuman tasks at the behest of Eurystheus, was

300 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

working with his greater wealth of fancy at exactly the
same problem. But the possession in common of the
conception of the Sun as a slave or thrall in no wise
proves community of culture between the Greek and
the Polynesian, except in so far as it illustrates how
the Greek came from ancestors who at some time
passed through a stage of thinking more or less like
that in which the Polynesian has remained.

The resemblances between the folk-tales of civilized
peoples are much closer, and enter much more into
details, than the likenesses between simple mythical
ideas which seem to be the common property of all
races. Nobody would ever think of maintaining that
the folk-tales of India and Scandinavia and Ireland
had severally an independent origin. Long-continued
community of tradition is the only cause which will
account for the great body of the common lore.

Let us now see how the elementary mythical inci-
dents, out of which Aryan folk-tales are woven, are in
many cases to be interpreted. I said a moment ago
that all folk-tales are not nature myths, but undoubt-
edly a good many folk-tales are. Our friend Koshchei
the Deathless is a curious and interesting personage ;
let us see what we can make of him.

Between the Russian legend of Koshchei and the
Hindu legend of Punchkin we have noted some gen-
eral resemblances. Both these characters are mischief
makers, with whom the hearer is not expected to sym-
pathize, and who finally meet their doom at the hands
of the much-tried and much-wandering hero of the
story. Both carry off beautiful women, who coquet
with them just enough to lure them to destruction.
Such resemblances may not suffice to prove their

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 301

mythologic identity, but a more specific likeness is not
wanting. The Russian legends of Koshchei are many,
and in one of them his life depends on an egg which
is in a duck shut up in a casket underneath an oak
tree, far away. In all the main incidents this version
coincides with the story of Punchkin, up to the smash-
ing of the egg by Prince Ivan, which'causes the death
of the deathless Koshchei. There can thus be no
doubt that the two personages stand for the same
mythical idea. Again, we have seen that Koshchei is
in his most singular characteristic identifiable with the
water demon of the Bohemian tale. In several Rus-
sian legends of the same cycle, the part of Koshchei is
played by a water-snake, who at pleasure can assume
the humanform. In view of the entire grouping of the
incidents, one can hardly doubt that this serpent belongs
to the same family with Typhon, Ahi, and Echidna,
and is to be counted among the robber Panis, the
enemies of the solar deity Indra, who steal the light
and bury it in distant caverns, but are sure to be discov-
ered and discomfited in the end. The dawn nymph—
Marya Morevna, Daughter of the Sea, or whatever
other name she may assume — is always true to her
character, which is to be consistently false to the demon
of darkness, with whom she coquets for a while, but
only to inveigle him to destruction at the hands of her
solar lover. The separation of the bright hero, Odys-
seus, or Kamaralzeman, or Prince Ivan, from his
twilight bride, and his long nocturnal wanderings in
search of her, exposed on the way to all manner of
perilous witchcraft, which he invariably baffles, — all
these incidents are transparent enough in their mean-
ing. The horrid old witch, the Baba Yaga, is in many

302 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

respects the ugly counterpart of the more agreeable
Kalypso and Kirke, or of the abominable Queen Labe
in the Arabian tale of “ Beder and Johara.” The Baba
Yaga figures very extensively in Russian folk-lore as
a malignant fiend, and one prominent way in which
she wreaks her malice is to turn her victims into stone.
Herein she agrees with the Gorgon Medusa and the
magician Punchkin. Why the fiends of darkness
should be described as petrifying their victims is per-
haps not obvious, until we reflect that throughout an
immense circle of myths the powers of winter are indis-
criminately mixed up with those of the night time, as
being indiscriminately the foes of the sun god Zeus or
Indra. That the demon of winter should turn its vic-
tims into stone for a season, until they are released by
the solar hero, is in no wise incomprehensible, even to
our mature and prosaic style of thinking. The hero
who successfully withstands the spell of the Gorgon,
after many less fortunate champions have succumbed
to it, is the indomitable Perseus, who ushers in the
springtime.

The malignant characteristics of Punchkin are thus,
in the Russian tale, divided between Koshchei and
his ally, the Baba Yaga. It is in this random, helter-
skelter way that the materials of folk-lore are ordina-
rily put together. But the instinct of the story-teller
is here correct enough, for he feels that these demons
really belong to the same family, though he cannot
point, as the scholar can, to the associations of ideas
which have determined what characteristics are to be
assigned them. It cannot be too carefully borne in
mind that the story-teller knows nothing whatever of
the ancient mythical significance of the incidents

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 303

which he relates. He recites them as they were
told to him, in pursuance of some immemorial tra-
dition of which nobody knows either the origin or
the meaning. Yet in most instances the contrast
between the good and the evil powers, between the
god of light and warmth and comfort on the one hand
and the fiends of darkness and cold and misery on the
other, is so distinctly marked in the features of the
immemorial myth that the story-teller—ignorant as
he is of the purport of his talk—is not likely alto-
gether to overlook it. As a general rule the attri-
butes of Hercules are but seldom confounded with
those of Cacus. Now and then, however, a con-
fusion occurs, as we might expect, where there ig
no obvious reason why a particular characteristic
should be assigned to a good rather than to an evil
hero. In this way some of the relatively neutral
features in a solar myth have been assigned indiffer-
ently to the powers of light and the powers of dark-
ness. It seems to have puzzled Max Miiller that, in
the myth of the Trojan War, the night demon Paris
should appear invested with some of the attributes of
solar heroes. But I think it is natural that this should
be so when we consider how far the myth-makers
were from intending anything like an allegory, and
how slightly they were bound by any theoretical con-
sistency in the use of their multifarious materials.
The old antithesis of the good and the bad has gener-
ally been well sustained in the folk-lore which has de-
scended from the myths of antiquity, but incidents not
readily thus distinguishable have been parcelled out
very much at random. Bearing this in mind, we have
no difficulty in understanding why the black magician’s

304 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

life depends on the integrity of an egg, or some other
such object, outside of him. In the legends we have
been considering, it is the fiend of darkness who is
thus conditioned, but, originally, it is beyond all ques-
tion that the circumstance refers to the sun. Out of
a hundred legends of this class, it is safe to say that
ninety represent the career of the hero as bound up
with the duration of an egg. And here, I think, we
come close to the primitive form of the myth. This
mysterious egg is the roc’s egg which the malign
African Efreet asked Aladdin to hang up in the dome
of his palace. It is the sun; and when the life of the
sun is destroyed, as when he goes down, the life of the
hero who represents him is also destroyed. From this
mythical source we have the full explanation of the
singular fate of such personages as Meleagros, and
Punchkin, and Koshchei the Deathless.

It is an odd feature of Koshchei that, while invari-
ably distinguished as immortal, he is invariably slain
by his solar adversary. But herein what have we to
note save the fact that the night demon, though per-
petually slain, yet rises again, and presents a bold front,
as before, to the solar hero? In the mythology of the
American Indians we have this everlasting conflict
between the dark and the bright deities. The West,
or the spirit of darkness, contends with the East, or
the spirit of light. The struggle begins on the moun-
tains, and the West is forced to give ground. The
East drives him across rivers and over mountains and
lakes, until at last they come to the brink of this
world. “Hold!” cries the West; “hold, my son!
You know my power and that it is impossible to kill
me!” Nothing can be more transparent than the

KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS 305 -

meaning of all this ; and it is in just this way that the
deathless Koshchei is slain again and again by his
solar antagonist.

Conversely, among the incidents of the legend
which we omitted as too cumbrous for citation is one
in which Prince Ivan is chopped into small pieces by
Koshchei, and is brought to life again only by most
weird magic. What can be more obvious than that
here we have the perennial conflict between Day and
Night,—the struggle that knows no end, because both
the antagonists are immortal ?

As for the conception of grateful beasts, who in so
many legends aid the solar hero in time of need, I
think it is most likely derived from a mingling together
of ancient myths in which the sun himself figures as a
beast. In various ancient myths the sun is repre-
sented as a horse or a bull, or even as a fish, — Oannes
or Dagon, — who swims at night through a subterra-
nean ocean from the west, where he has disappeared,
to the east, whence he is to emerge. The cock is also,
quite naturally, a solar animal, and his cheerful crow
is generally the signal at which ghosts and night
demons depart in confusion. In popular legends, in
which these primitive connections of ideas have been
blurred and partially forgotten, we need not be sur-
prised to find these and other solar beasts assisting
the solar hero.

The beast, on the other hand, who enlists his ser-
vices in support of the powers of darkness is usually a
wolf, or a serpent, or a fish. In many legends the sun
is supposed to be swallowed by a fish at nightfall, and
cast up again at daybreak; and in the same way the
wolf of darkness devours little Red Riding Hood, the

2x

306 KOSHCHEI THE DEATHLESS

dawn nymph, with her robe of crimson twilight, and,
according to the German version, yields her up whole
and sound when he is cut open next day. But the
fish who devours the sun is more often a water-snake,
or sea-dragon, and we have seen that Koshchei the
Deathless is connected by ties of kinship with these
mythical animals. In the readiness with which Kosh-
chei and the water fiend of the Bohemian legend
undergo metamorphosis we are reminded of the clas-
sic Proteus. But in the suddenness with which their
giant strength is acquired we seem to have a reminis-
cence of the myth of Hermes, the god of the winds in
the Homeric Hymn, who, while yet an infant in the
cradle, becomes endowed with giant powers, and works
mischief with the cloud cattle of Apollo, retreating
afterward through the keyhole, and shrinking back
into his cradle with a mocking laugh. This mythical
conception duly reappears in the Arabian story of the
Efreet whom the fisherman releases from a bottle, who
instantly grows into a gigantic form that towers among
the clouds.

- Thus in these curious stories, to which our children
listen to-day with breathless interest, we have the old
mythical notions of primitive people most strangely
distorted and blended together. We may fairly regard
them as the alluvial refuse which the stream of tradi-
tion has brought down from those distant highlands of
mythology where our primeval ancestors recorded their
crude and childlike impressions of the course of natural
events. Out of the mouths of babes comes wisdom;
and so from this quaint medley of nursery lore we
catch glimpses of the thoughts of mankind in ages
of which the historic tradition has utterly vanished.

- nee mine iS eS Bo ee ~

INDEX

A

Abenaki Indians, the, 92.

Abercrombie, General,
Ticonderoga, L10-I1I.

Abingdon, chronicles of, 8.

Adams, John, quoted concerning the
Boston tea party, 195.

Adams, Samuel, 173, 178, 189, 190,
19I, 193.

- “ Advisableness of Improving Natural
Knowledge, The,” Huxley’s, 201.

Aeschylus, rank of, as a poet, 67.

Ages, the Carboniferous, Jurassic, and
Eocene, 263-265.

“ Agnostic,” Huxley originates the epi-
thet, 210.

Aix-la-Chapelle, treaty of, 105.

Alaska, a native artist in, 20.

Albany, cause of founding of, 129; the
congress at (1754), 169.

Algonquins, the, 92-93; alliance be-
tween the French and the, 96.

“America’s Place in History,” Dr.
Fiske’s, 126; quoted, 137n., 145 n.,
147 0, 149 n., I5I n., 154 n.

Amherst, General Jeffrey, III, 112,
113.

Andastes, the, 92.

Andokides, 7.

Arabian Nights, references to tales in
the, 293, 294, 295.

Archives, increased facility of access to
national, 9.

“ Areopagitica,” Milton’s, 62.

Aristophanes, 7.

Aristotle, 15.

Arnold, Matthew, 232.

Art and religion, Milton’s view of, 46.

Ass, the, in Hindu mythology, 288-280.

Atlantosaurus, the, 263-264.

attacks Fort

Atonement, Pynchon’s treatise on the,
145.

Attucks, Crispus, the Boston monument
to, 163-164.

Aubrey, John, 40.

B

Baba Yaga, the, 295-296, 301-302.

Baer, Carl Ernest von, influence of
work of, on Spencer, 222, 273-274.

Baldwin, Abraham, in the constitutional
convention at Philadelphia, 159.

Bancroft, George, 20.

Barnet, Gilbert, “History of the Ref-
ormation ” by, II.

Barré, Colonel, 113.

Bastian, Dr., on spontaneous generation,
244-245.

Bedford, Gunning, anti-federalist speech
of, in constitutional convention, 158.

Beecher, Henry Ward, 5.

Belfast Address, Tyndall’s, 200, 246.

Black, Joseph, discovery of latent heat
by, 254.

Body of Liberties, the Massachusetts,
133, 140.

Boleyn, Anne, 4.

Boston Massacre, the, 163-164, 185.

Boston, tea-ships at, 188-194.

Bouquet, Henry, 112, 120.

Braddock’s defeat, 106-109.

Bradford, William, 14, 131.

Bradford manuscript, the, 14.

Braintree, Mass., founding of, 140.

Bramford, Long Island, settlement of,
LSE

Brodie, Sir Benjamin, 202.

Bruce, Robert, 4.

Brynhild, analogy between Marya
Morevna and, 294, 296.

. 3097

308

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 24.

Buechner, Ludwig, Huxley’s disapproval
of, 211; quoted concerning Pythag-
oras’s sacrifice of oxen, 281.

Bureau of Ethnology, the Washington,
30-31.

Bushy Run, battle of, 120.

Cc

Cambridge University in Milton’s day, 41.

Carlovingians, period in history of the,
28.

Carlyle, Thomas, 9, 24, 235.

Catastrophism, theory of, 264-265;
overthrown by Lyell, 265-260.

Cayuga Indians, the, 93, 94.

Champlain, Samuel de, 88, 95-96.

Chancery records, lack of care in pre-
serving, IO-II.

Charleston, tea-ships at, 188-189.

Charlevoix, the Jesuit historian, 101.

Cherokees, the, 92.

Chickasaws, the, 92.

Children, bounties on, in French colo-
nies, 86.

Choctaws, the, 92.

Clarendon, Earl of, 63.

Cobbler of Agawam, the, 133, 140.

Commines, 32.

Committees of correspondence, 189-190.

Comte, Auguste, Philosophy of Posi-
tivism of, 203, 282.

* Comus,” 45-46.

Conestoga, the sack of, 118.

Congreve, controversy of Huxley with,
on scientific aspects of Positivism,
203.

Connecticut, settlement of, by men from
Massachusetts, 142-145; common-
wealth of, created, 146-147; consti-
tution of (Fundamental Orders),
146-149; constitution of, compared
to that of New Haven, 153; annex-
ation of New Haven by, 155-156;
part played by, in formation of fed-
eral constitution of United States,
156-159.

“Conspiracy of Pontiac,” Parkman’s,
120, 126.

Constantinople in history, 29.

INDEX

Constitution of Athens, Aristotle’s, 15.

Cook, James, 113.

Copernicus, 259.

“Cosmic Philosophy,” Dr. Fiske’s, 204,
284.

Cotton, John, 130, 132, 134, 138, 141,
150.

Coues, Dr., 127.

Courtemanche, General, invasion of
Mohawk country by, 102.

Crayfish, the, Huxley’s work on, 226,

Creek Indians, the, 92.

Cromwell, Oliver, 19, 25, 60, 61-62, 63.

Cullender, Rose, 277.

Curtius, Ernst, history of Greece by, 27.

Cutler, Manasseh, letters of, 13.

D

Dante, rank of, among the great poets,
66.

Darwin, Charles, confession of, to liking
for falsifying when a child, 17; the
“Origin of Species,’ 201, 283;
similarity between beginnings of
Huxley’s career and that of, 220;
Huxley’s support of, 224-225; the
theory of Natural Selection, 271;
not the originator of the doctrine of
evolution, 272-273; rejected for
membership in the French Academy
of Sciences, 282.

Davenport, John, 150, 151, 152, 156.

Dawn, myths which are stories of the,
299, 305-306.

“Decline and Fall of the Roman Em-
pire,” Gibbon’s, 33, 37-38.

Deerfield massacre, the, 104.

“Defence of the English People,” Mil-
ton’s, 61.

“Defence of the King,” Salmasius’, 60-
61.

‘Delaware Indians, the, 92, 95, 116, 120.

Dentreath, Dolly, 268.

“ Diary and Letters of Thomas Hutch-
inson,” 163.

Dickinson, John, letters of, 13.

Dinosaurs, the, 264.

Dinwiddie, Governor Robert, 106, 166.

Dipper, an unknown article in England,
217.

INDEX

“Discovery of America,” Dr. Fiske’s,
12) 252.

Disraeli, Benjamin, Huxley on, 208.

Dog, the, Huxley’s projected book on,
226.

Dorchester, Mass., 136, 138, 139, 143.

Dustin, Hannah, 99-101.

E

East India Company, George III.’s
arrangement with, as to tea for
Americans, 187-188.

Eaton, Theophilus, 150.

Ecuyer, Captain, 90-91.

Edict of Nantes, effect on France of
revocation of, 78-80.

Edward I., differing views of, 4-5.

“Fikon Basilike,” the, 60.

“ Eikonoklastes,” the, 60.

“Elegy written in a Country Church-
yard,” an appreciative view of, 115.

Eliot, John, 139.

Ellsworth, Oliver, 158.

Empire of the East, Roman, historical
importance of, underrated, 29.

Engine, the steam, invention of, marks
an epoch in evolution of civilization,
254-256.

England, misconception as to form of
government of, as compared with
that of United States, 25.

Erasmus, 43.

Erckmann-Chatrian, 79.

Erie Indians, the, 92, 94.

“Essai sur les Mceurs,” Voltaire’s, 32.

Euripides, 15.

Evarts, William M., 229 n.

Evesham, chronicles of, 8.

“ Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature,”
Huxley’s, 200-201.

Evolution, law of, discovered by Spen-
cer, 222, 273-276; Tyndall’s con-
nection with exposition of doctrine
of, 245-246; Darwin not the author
of, 272-273.

Ewald, 8n.; quoted, 10-11.

F

Fairfield, Conn., settlement of, 151 n.
Faraday, Michael, 243, 244, 275.

309

Filson Club of Kentucky, the, 127;

“Finding of Wineland, The,” Reeves’s,
16,

“First Principles,” Spencer’s, 199-200.

Five Nations, the, 92; alliance between
the English and, 96.

Florida, discovery of an old mfp of, 13.

Folk-lore, Scoto-Irish, German, and
Aryan, 290-291.

Forbes, General, capture of Fort Du-
quesne by, 112.

Fort Duquesne, built by the French,
106; Braddock’s expedition against,
106-109; captured by the English,
112; Franklin obtains horses for
expedition against, 167.

Fort Loyal, massacre of, 99.

Fort Pitt, Captain Ecuyer’s experience
at, 90-91; Fort Duquesne becomes,
112,

Fort William Henry, Montcalm de-
stroys, II10.

Foster, Michael, at the Huxleys’, 217.

France, misconception as to United
States’ form of government and that
of, 25-26; effect on, of persecution
of Huguenots, 78-So.

Franklin, Benjamin, Braddock’s remarks
to, 107; gives advice to anti-Indian
rioters, I19; secures horses for
Braddock’s expedition, 167; at
Albany congress of 1754, 169-170.

Frederick the Great, 109.

Freeman, Edward A., 4, 22, 24; asa
lecturer in America, 246.

Freuden-Berger, 5.

Froissart, 32.

Frontenac, Count, 90, 97-98, 102-103,
166.

Froude, James A., 3, 24.

“Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,
The,” 146-149.

G

Gage, General Thomas, 107.

Galileo, Milton’s visit to, 56.
Gandharvas, the Vedic, 288.

Gardiner, Rawson, 9.

Gates, Horatio, 107.

Gauden, Dr., the “ Eikon Basilike ”’ of, 60.

310 INDEX

Geneva, Milton at, 57.

George III., beginning of reign of, 175
—176; opposed to Parliamentary re-
form, 179; forces a quarrel with the
Americans, 180-184; “trying the
question ” with America, 187-188.

Georgia, the deciding vote of, in forma-
tion of federal constitution, 159.

Gessler, no such person‘as, in history, 5.

Gibbon, Edward, 32-33, 37-38.

Gladstone, W. E., Huxley’s opinion of,
208-209 ; controversy of, with Her-
bert Spencer, 208-209.

Goethe, 37, 43, 67.

Goodell, Abner C., 164, 165.

Gorton, Samuel, 135, 154.

Governors, royal, question of salaries of,
182-183.

Great Meadows, battle of, 106.

*¢ Greatest of all the Plantagenets, The,”
Seeley’s, 4.

Greece, histories of, 26-27, 165.

Green, John Richard, 23-24, 218, 282;
report by, of Wilberforce-Huxley
encounter, 202-203.

Gregory of Tours, 32.

Grenville, George, becomes British
prime minister, 171.

Grote, George, 26-27.

Groton, massacre at, 99.

Guilford, Conn., settlement of, 1 Bue

Guizot,) Ff: G:, 10.

H

- Hall, Robert, 5.

Hamilton, Lord Claud, 200, 248.

Hancock, John, a participant in Boston
tea party, 194.

Harrison, Frederic, at the Huxleys’, 218.

Hartford, settlement of, 143-144; first
General Court of Connecticut held at
(1637), 146; constitution of com-
monwealth of Connecticut framed
and adopted at, 146-149.

Harvard College, autograph of Milton
in library of, 57; the iron cross over
entrance to library of, 105; found-
ing of, 144.

Haverhill, Mass., Indian outrages at,
99, 104.

Hawes, George Robert Twelves, 194.

Hawke, Sir Edward, 111, 112.

Haynes, John, 139.

Heat, radiant, Tyndall’s work on sub-
ject of, 245; latent, Joseph Black’s
discovery of, 254.

“Heat considered as a Mode of Mo-
tion,” Tyndall’s, 245.

Heilprin, Angelo, 207-208.

Helmholtz, 245, 275.

Hemans, Mrs. Felicia, 130, 131.

Henry VIII., old and new views of, 3-4.

Henry, Patrick, 13, 173, 178.

“Herbert Spencer on the Americans,
and the Americans on Herbert
Spencer,” Youmans’, 229 n.

Hermes, the myth of, 306.

Herodotus, 31.

Hildebrand, 28.

History, Greek origin of the word, 23.

“ History of England,” Hume’s, 33.

“History of England,” Milton’s pro-
jected, 65.

“History of the English People,”
Green’s, 23-24.

“History of Evolution,” von Baer’s, 273.

‘History of Greece,” Grote’s, 26-27.

“‘ History of Greece,” Mitford’s, 26, 165.

“ History of the Old South Church,”
Hill’s, 14.

“ History of Plymouth,” Bradford’s, 14.

“ History of the Reformation,” Barnet’s,
Il.

“ History of Rome,” Mommsen’s, 27.

Hooker, Joseph D., 213.

Hooker, Thomas, 125, 139-141, 142,
145.

Horses, historic importance of domesti-
cation of, 251-252, 257.

Horton, Milton’s home at, 44, 57.

Howard, Catherine, 4.

Howe, General, and Charles Lee, 14.

Howe, Lord, slain at battle of Ticon-
deroga, I10.

Howe, Sir William, in expedition against
Quebec, 113.

Huguenots, persecution of, in France,
78-80.

Hume, David, superficial and careless
work of, 33; Huxley’s regard for,
210.

ss

|
|

INDEX

Huron Indians, the, 92, 94, 117.

Hutchinson, Anne, 135, 136, 142.

Hutchinson, Thomas, Diary and Letters
of, 13, 163; and the question of tea-
ships at Boston, 189-193.

Hutchinson Mob, the, 173, 184.

Hutchinsons, the younger, 189, 192.

Huxley, Leonard, memoir of T. H.
Huxley by, 199.

Huxley, Thomas Henry, on “ Paradise
Lost” and the popular theory of
creation, 65-66; memoir of, Leon-
ard Huxley’s, 199; encounter with
the Bishop of Oxford, 201-203;
family life of, 204-205, 217-218;
wonderful erudition of, 205-208;
views of Disraeli, Louis Napoleon,
and Gladstone, 208-209; attitude
of, toward belief ina future life, 211-
13; death of,. 219; sketch of
scientific career of, 220-224; friend-
ship of, with Tyndall and Spencer,

243.

I

Illinois Indians, the, 92.

“Tl Penseroso,” 46, 48-50.

India House at Seville, records of the,
12.

Indians, tact of the French in managing
the, 90-91; divisions of North
American, 91-93; outrages perpe-
trated by, 98-101, 104, 117-118; the
everlasting conflict between dark
and bright deities in mythology of,
304-305.

Inquisition, establishment of, in Spain,

77:

Intendant, the, in Canada, 83-85.

Iron, smelting of, stage in evolution of
society marked by, 253.

Troquois, the, 92-96; the Long House
of, 93-94; defeated by Algonquins
under Frontenac, 102-103.

Italy, Milton in, 56-57.

i

‘Jack and his Comrades,” 287-288.
Jackson, Hughlings, 204.
*

&»
_
|

Janauschek, Fanny, 297 n.

Jansen, Cornelius, 39.

Jesuit Relations, the, 88, 101, 127-128.

Jesuits, the, in America, 88-89, 94.

Jogues, the Jesuit, 88.

Johns Hopkins University historical
studies, 127.

Johnson, General, 110, 113, 120.

Johnson, Sir William, 103-104, 116.

Johnson, William Samuel, 158.

Johnson Hall, 72, 104.

Jonson, Ben, 45.

K

Kant, Immanuel, Huxley’s preference
of Hume to, 211.

Kepler, 259, 260.

Kickapoo Indians, the, 92.

King, Edward, 51, 52.

King Philip’s War, 116-117.

Kingsley, Charles, letter from Huxley to,
quoted, 212.

Kopp, the Swiss historian, 5.

Koshchei the Deathless, the legend of,
294-296, 300-302, 304-305.

L

“L’ Allegro,” 46-48, 50.

Lallemant, the Jesuit, 88.

Land Bank, the Massachusetts, 170.

Langlade, Charles de, 108.

Lankester, Ray, at the Huxleys’, 217.

La Salle, Robert de, 94, 97, 98.

Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 32.

Laud, Archbishop, 53, 57, 139.

Lawes, Henry, 45.

“Lectures on the Origin of Species,”
Huxley’s, 200-201.

Lee, Charles, 13-14.

‘Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Star-
craft of England,” 8.

Lejeune, the Jesuit chronicler, 88.

Lewes, George Henry, 204, 210, 247.

“ Life and Letters,” Darwin’s, quoted, 17.

* Life of Milton,” Masson’s, 37.

“Limits of Religious Thought,” Man-
sel’s, 210.

Literature, pseudonymous, 18.

Littré, the French philosopher, 79.

312 INDEX

Long House, the, of the Iroquois, 93-94.

Longfellow, Henry W., sheds new light
on character of Cotton Mather, 20-
21,

Louis XIV., expulsion of Huguenots by,
78-80; and his American colonies,
83.

Louis Napoleon, Huxley’s opinion of, 208.

Louisburg, fortress of, taken by New
Englanders, 104-105; captured by
General Amherst, 112.

Louisiana purchase, the, 121.

Lowell, James Russell, 44.

Lubbock, Sir John, 204, 247.

Lucretius, 67.

Ludlow, Roger, 142, 145, 151 n.

“ Lycidas,” 50-55.

Lyell, Sir Charles, Darwin’s regard for
opinion of, 225 ; theory of catastro-
phism overthrown by, 265-267.

Lysias, 7.

M

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 7, 9, 64.

Machiavelli, 32.

Macmillan, Alexander, 216.

Madison, James, work of, in constitu-
tional convention at Philadelphia,
1s

Mahaffy, J. P., the works of, 27.

Maine, Sir Henry, writings of, on juris-
prudence, 30.

Maisonneuve, the Jesuit, 88.

Malesherbes, 79.

Malmesbury, chronicles of, 8.

Mansel, Dean, Huxley’s description of,
210-211.

Manso, Marquis, Milton the guest of,
at Naples, 56.

Map of Florida, discovery of an old, 13.

~Marble, Manton, 203.

Mary Tudor, burning of heretics in reign
of, 80.

Marya Morevna, the legend of, 294-296.

Mask, the Elizabethan, 45.

Mason, George, letters of, 13.

Massachusetts Bay colony, originally
a commercial company, 131-132;
character of political and religious
views in, 132-133; becomes a self-

governing republic, 136-137; exodus
from, to Connecticut, 142-144.

Massacre of Piedmont, Milton’s sonnet
on, 62.

Massacres, Indian, 98-101, 104; in
Pontiac’s war, 117-118,

Masson, David, 37, 39, 63, 64.

Mather, Cotton, true attitude of, in
Salem witchcraft trials, 20-21.

Maverick, John, 141-142.

Mayflower compact, the, 147 n.

Mermaid Tavern, the, 39.

Miami tribe of Indians, the, 92, 94, 95.

Michael Angelo, genius of, more uni-
versal than that of Milton, 37.

Migne, Abbé, 8.

Milford, Conn., settlement of, 151.

Milton, John (the elder), 38-39, 40, 44,
56.

Milton, John, family of, 38; birth of, 39;
portraits of, 39; at Cambridge Uni-
versity, 41-43; life at Horton, 44;
“Comus,” 45-46; “L’Allegro” and
“Tl Penseroso,” 46-50; “ Lycidas,”
50-55; trip on the Continent, 55-
57; a Root-and-Branch man, 58;
marriage, 58; Latin secretary under
the Commonwealth, 60; “ Defence
of the English People,” 61; “ Areo-
pagitica,” 62; death of second wife,
62; blindness, 63; third wife, 63;
death, 65.

Milton, Richard, 38.

Mitford, William, example of a preju-
diced historian, 26, 165.

Mohawk tribe of Indians, the, 93.

Mohegan Indians, the, 92, 129.

Mommsen, Theodor, 27.

Montagu, Admiral, at Boston tea party,
194.

Montcalm, Marquis de, 110, 113-115.

More, Sir Thomas, 3.

Morgan, Lewis, 30.

Moriscoes, expulsion of, from Spain, 77.

Morris, Gouverneur, letters of, 13.

Miller, Max, 303.

N

Narragansett Indians, the, 92, 129.
Naseby, battle of, 59.

INDEX

Natchez Indians, the, 92.

Natick Indians, the, 129.

Natural Selection, theory of, 271-272.

Neutral Nation, the, 92, 94.

New England confederation of 1643,
154.

New Haven, founding of, 150-151; early
constitution of, 152-153; annexa-
tion of, to Connecticut, 155-156.

New London, Conn., colony established
at, 152 n.

New Netherland, character of growth
of, 129.

Newton, Sir Isaac, 259-260, 281; Her-
bert Spencer termed a_ greater,
276.

New Town, the (Cambridge), 136, 137,
138, 140, 142, 144.

New Whigs, the, 174, 178.

New York, tea-ships at, 188-189.

New York congress of 1765, 178.

Nipmuck Indians, the, 129.

North, Lord, character of, 181; suc-
ceeds Townshend as George III.’s
minister, 184; proposes repeal of
Revenue Act, 186.

O

“Objective Method and Verification,”
Lewes’s, 210.

Ohio Company, the, 106.

Ojibwa tribe of Indians, the, 92, 93.

Old Sarum, 176.

Old South Church, Boston, Hill’s history
of, 14; a famous town-meeting in,
192-193.

Old Whigs, the, 174, 176, 179.

Oneida Indians, the, 93, 94, 102.

Onondaga Indians, the, 93, 102.

“Origin of Species,’ Darwin’s, 201,
283.

Osborne, Admiral, 111.

Ottawa Indians, the, 92, 94.

Oviedo, recovery of first folio of, 14-
15.

Owen, Richard, Huxley’s controversy
with, on true nature of the verte-
brate skull, 224.

Oxen, historic importance of domesti-
cation of, 251-252, 257.

313

P

Pantcha Tantra, the, 290.

“ Paper and Parchment,’”’ Ewald’s, 8 n.,
IO-II.

“ Paradise Lost,” 55, 56, 63-66.

“Paradise Regained,” 66.

Paris, peace of, 120-122, 166.

Parkman, Francis, 120, 126.

Parkman Club of Milwaukee, the, 127.

Paston Letters, the, 12-13.

Pattison, Mark, quoted concerning Mil-
ton, 45-46, 62; at the Huxleys’,
218.

Paxton, Pa., anti-Indian headquarters at,
118-119.

Peabody, Andrew Preston,
165.

Pennsylvania, reason of freedom of, from
Indian troubles, 95 ; massacres in,
during Pontiac’s war, 117-118 ; con-
troversies arising from the massacres,
118-120; character of growth of, as
a colony, 129.

Pepperell, William, 105.

Pequot tribe of Indians, the, 92, 95, 129,
154.

Pequot River, the, name changed to
Thames, 152 n.

“ Persistence of force,” Spencer’s phrase,
suggested by Huxley, 200.

Philadelphia, tea-ships at, 188-189.

Phillips, George, 142.

Phips, Sir William, ror.

Photography, reproduction of old parch-
ments by means of, 15-16.

Pinzon, the younger, historical point
concerning, 12.

Pitt, William, 109, 112, 177, 178.

Plato, 7, 49.

Plutarch, 32.

Plymouth colony, comparative religious
tolerance in, 131.

Pococke, Admiral, 111.

Poets, Milton’s rank among the first
nine, 66-67.

Pollock, Sir Frederick, 207, 218.

Polybius, 32.

Pontiac, conspiracy of, 116-120, 126,
167, 170, 171.

Porter, Jane, 4.

163-164,

314 INDEX

Portsmouth, the founding of, 135.
Positivism, the philosophy of, 203, 282.
Pottawatomies, an Indian tribe, 92.
Powell, Major J. W., 30.

Powell, Mary (Mrs. John Milton), 58-

59-

Powell, Richard, 58.

Prefects, government by, 82-87.

Priestley, Dr. Joseph, 258.

Prince, Rev. Thomas, 14.

Prynne, William, 10-11.

Punchkin, the story of, 293-294, 300-
302, 304-305.

Pynchon, William, 145.

Pythagoras, story of sacrifice of oxen by,
281.

Q

Quakers, controversy between Pennsyl-
vania Presbyterians and, I19.

Quebec, taken from the French by the
English, 113-115.

Quiberon, defeat of French fleet off,
132,

Quincy, Josiah, warns Bostonians against
rash acts in the tea-ship agitation,
192-193.

R

Ranke, Leopold von, 9.

Reeves, Arthur Middleton, 16.

Reform, Parliamentary, 178-179.

Revenue Act, the Townshend-North,
181-184, 186.

Revere, Paul, a participant in Boston
tea party, 194.

Robinson, John, 131.

Rockingham, Lord, becomes British
prime minister, 173.

Rodney, Admiral, 112.

Romilly, Lord, 11.

Root-and-Branch men, 57-58.

Rosse, Lord, remarks by, in giving Royal
medal to Huxley, 221.

Rotch, Francis, 192.

Rotten boroughs, English, 176, 178.

Rumford, Count, 256-257, 275.

Rutherford, Samuel, 133.

Ryswick, peace of, 103.

s

St. Albans, chronicles of, 8.

Sainte-Beuve, 6.

Salem witchcraft, part taken by Cotton
Mather in, 20-21.

Salmasius, “‘ Defence of the King ” by,
60-61.

Salmon Falls, massacre of, 99.

“Samson Agonistes,” 66,

Sanskrit, study of, 30.

Saxo Grammaticus, 5.

Saybrook, Conn., founded, 151 n.

Schenectady, massacre of, 98-99, 125.

Schuyler, Peter, 102.

“ Seottish Chiefs, The,” 4.

Seeley, Robert, 4.

Selection, Natural, Darwin’s theory of,
271-272.

Seminole Indians, the, 92.

Seneca Indians, the, 93, 94, 117, 120.

Seven Wise Masters, the, 290.

Seven Years’ War, the, 109.

Shakespeare, 32, 37, 38, 39, 45, 66.

Shawnee Indians, the, 92, 95, 120.

Shepard, Thomas, 144.

Sherman, Roger, 158.

Shirley, Governor William, 104-105, 171.

Sime, James, 216.

‘“‘ Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” the, 133,
140.

Six Nations, the, 92, 103.

“ Soapy Sam ” incident, the, 201-203.

Soldiers, colonial, in Louisburg expedi-
tion, 104-105; in old French war,
Tit:

Sonnets, Milton’s Italian, 56; Milton’s,
on Vane, Cromwell, and the Mas-
sacre of Piedmont, 62.

Sophocles, 67.

Southold, Long Island, settlement of,
14

Spain, effect on, of expulsion of the
Moriscoes and establishment of the
Inquisition, 77-78.

Sparks, Jared, and Washington’s letters,
19.

Spencer, Herbert, association of, with
Huxley and Tyndall, 199-200, 243;
“an expert in gastronomy,” 204,
247; as a reader of books, 205-206;

a

a

"|

4
‘
b

INDEX

Gladstone’s controversy with, 208-
209; formulation of doctrine of
evolution wholly due to, 222, 273-
276; Dr. Fiske’s address at farewell
banquet to, 229-237; similarity of
early life of, and Tyndall’s, 241.

Spinoza, Huxley’s fondness for, 207.

Spontaneous Generation, the Tyndall-
Bastian controversy on, 244-245.

Springfield, Mass., founding of, 145.

Stamford, Conn., settlement of, 151.

Stamp Act, Grenville’s, 171-174; Town-
shend’s, 181-184.

Stevens, Benjamin, 16.

Stone, Samuel, 125, 139.

Strachey, Sir Henry, 14.

Strafford, Earl of, 57.

Stratford, Mass., settlement of, 151 n.

Stuarts, expulsion of the, 7; effect on
America of, 98-103.

Sumner, Charles, 57.

Sun, myths which are stories of the,
299-300, 305-306.

Sun-catcher myths, 299.

Susquehannock Indians, the, 92, 94.

T

Tacitus, 32.

“Tall teas,” the Huxleys’, 204-205, 217-
218, 247.

Tea party, the Boston, some of the par-
ticipants in, 193-194.

Tell, William, story of, exploded, 5.

Thames River, name changed from
Pequot to, 152 n.

Theocritus, 50, 54.

Thompson, Benjamin (Count Rumford),
256-257, 275.

“Through Nature to God,” Dr. Fiske’s,
quoted, 231 n.

Thucydides, 7, 18-19, 31, 32.

Ticonderoga, battle of, 110-111.

“Titled bride,’’? Huxley’s, 200, 248.

Tobacco, commercial basis of Old Vir-
ginia the exportation of, 128.

Tower of London, as storehouse for
records, IO-II.

“‘ Town-meeting principle,” the, 81-82.

“Town Musicians of Bremen, The,”
287.

315

Townshend, Charles, character of, 181;
as George III.’s lieutenant in struggle
with the Americans, 182-183; death
of, 184.

Trilobites, the, 265.

Troops, numbers of, furnished by colo-
nies for Louisburg expedition, 104—
105; colonial, in old French war,
Trr.

Tuscarora tribe of Indians, 92, 103.

Tweed, Boss, analogy between George
III.’s attitude and that of, 188.

Tylers, the, letters of, 13.

Tyndall, John, birth and early life of,
241; attends German universities,
242; becomes Fellow of Royal So-
ciety and Professor of Physics in the
Royal Institution, 242-243; friend-
ship of Spencer, Huxley, and, 243; as
a climber, 243-244; succeeds Faraday
as Director of the Royal Institution,
244; controversy on Spontaneous
Generation, 244-245; work of, on
radiant heat, and in exposition of
doctrine of evolution, 245-246; asa
lecturer in America, 246; in private
life, 247; marriage, 248.

U

Unification of nature, the, 258, 260-264.

Uniformitarianism, the so-called theory
of, 266-267.

Unitarian, Milton as a, 66.

“Unseen World,” Dr. Fiske’s, 212 n.

Utrecht, treaty of, 105.

Vv

Vane, Sir Henry, 63; Milton’s sonnet
on, 62.

Vatican library, 12.

Vico, G. B., effort of, to make history
scientific, 32.

Virgil, 50, 65, 67.

Virginia, character of, as a colony, 128.

Voltaire, 32.

Volunteers, colonial, in expedition
against Louisburg, 104-105.

316

Ww

Wallace, William, 4.

Walpole, Sir Robert, 176.

Wampanoag Indians, the, 129.

Ward, Nathaniel, on liberty of con-
science, 133; draws up the Massa-
chusetts “ Body of Liberties,” 140.

Warham, John, 141-142.

Warren, Joseph, 193-194.

Wars of the Roses, Paston Letters throw
light on, 12-13.

Warwick, Conn., beginnings of, 135, 154.

Washington, George, 62, 157; letters of,
edited by Sparks, 19; early military
undertakings of, 106; with General
Braddock, 107-108; assists in cap-
turing Fort Duquesne, 112.

Watertown, Mass., 136, 137, 138, 139,
143.

Watt, James, 251, 254.

Wentworth, Thomas, Earl of Strafford,
57:

“Werewolves and Swan Maidens,” Dr.
Fiske’s essay on, 298-299.

Wethersfield, Conn., settlement of, 143.

Wheelwright, John, 135, 136.

Wilberforce, Samuel, encounter of, with
Huxley, 201-203.

William the Conqueror, period in his-
tory of, 28.

Williams, Reger, 134, 135, 142.

Windsor, Conn., settlement of, 143.

Winnebago Indians, the, 92-93.

Winslow, Edward, 131.

Winthrop, John, Governor of Massachu-
setts, 134, 146.

INDEX

Winthrop, John (the younger), Governor
of Connecticut, 149 n., 155-156.
Witchcraft, disappearance of belief in,
277.

Wolfe, General James, 113-115.

Women, importation of, into Canada,
85-86; the Delaware Indians sub-
mit to be called, 95.

Writing, invention of, stage in evolution
of society marked by, 253.

x

X Club, the, 204, 247.
Xenophon, 7, 32.

Y.

“Yanechek and the Water Demon,”
297.

Year Books, the, importance of publica-
tion of, 9.

York, Maine, burned by French and
Indians, 99.

Youmans, E. L., version of the Wilber-
force-Huxley encounter, 201-202;
“Herbert Spencer on the Ameri-
cans,” etc., 229 n.;: Dr. Fiske’s Life
of, 247.

Young, Thomas, Milton’s tutor, 41.

Z

Zendavesta, the, 288.

Zend Yacna, the, 288.

“ Zodlogical Mythology,” Gubernatis’,
289 n.

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